Not enough

New Delhi, Feb. 12: India today said fresh WTO proposals in the Doha round on agriculture might push stalled global trade talks, but it did not make any changes to the existing proposals for cuts in tariffs and subsidies.

“Significant and effective reduction of trade-distorting subsidies of the developed countries is an issue on which there can be no compromise, because they affect the livelihood of millions of our poor farmers,” Union commerce minister Kamal Nath said here.

“Indian agriculture cannot be expected to carry the burden and most definitely not in a development round,” he added.

The minister said while convergence had been achieved in some areas, a new text regarding many unresolved issues had also been brought out.

Nath said he was happy that the new draft on agriculture brought back the original G-20 proposals of a minimum 54 per cent cut in agricultural tariff by developed countries and a maximum tariff cut of 36 per cent for developing nations.

However, he said there were issues where “large divergences” remained in the search for a successful conclusion to the troubled Doha round of trade talks, which was launched in 2001.

Ficci secretary-general Amit Mitra said the revised draft texts on agriculture and non-agricultural market access (NAMA) “do not suit Indian interests”.

“The text on NAMA, dealing with industrial goods, is likely to be opposed by India, as it retains many of the earlier provisions that has been rejected by many developing countries,” he said.

The first draft text was released in July last year.

The latest text on NAMA has retained the tariff reduction coefficient of 8-9 for developed and 19-23 for developing countries. It means developing countries such as India will have to have a range of cuts in bound import duties from 60 to 65 per cent while for the US, the range will be from 27 to 29 per cent. For the European Union, the cut in industrial goods import duties will range from 30 to 33 per cent if the current draft is accepted.