The Ministerial Meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) at Buenos Aires ended in a stalemate after some member countries refused to show the required flexibility in finding a permanent solution to the long-standing mandate of public stock holding for food security purposes. An inflexible stand by the US on issues impacting developing countries like India on the second day of the four-day conference started the process of intense negotiations that could not finally yield the desired result of having a Ministerial declaration that would have provided a road map to member countries over the next two years.
The push by a majority of countries to adopt new issues like e-commerce, investment facilitation, gender issues and MSMEs without paying adequate attention to outstanding issues of the Doha Round created a wedge among the 164 member countries that could not be bridged. The Ministerial brought to the fore the vast differences between member countries on the issue of WTO first concluding the Doha Mandate before moving to other new issues. India was of the view that the Ministerial Declaration should clearly call out on issues related to development, multilateralism and transparency.
While no Ministerial decision came about on the issue of Public Stock Holding for Food Security purposes, India remains unharmed as it can continue with all the existing product-specific public stock holding measures without even using the peace clause that was negotiated at the Bali Ministerial in 2013 as New Delhi is within the acceptable band of support that can be provided by developing countries.
Developing countries have a ceiling of domestic support of 10 per cent of the value of production of the concerned crop, called the product specific de minimus support. For India, the product specific domestic support at present on rice is at about 5 per cent and on wheat it is reported to be in the negative.
Therefore, though Buenos Aires has failed to deliver a permanent solution on the issue of public stock holding for food security purposes, India will remain unscathed, at least for the present. In the run-up to MC11 in Buenos Aires, decisions were expected on a permanent solution on food security and other agriculture issues.
However, Buenos Aires did deliver on some issues that included a Work Programme on disciplines on Fisheries Subsidies with a view to arriving at a decision by the next Ministerial Conference in 2019. Members decided to continue with the non-negotiating mandate of the existing Work Programme on E-commerce. It was also decided to continue with the current practice of not imposing customs duties on electronic transmissions for another two years till 2019.
Ministerial Decisions on new issues like Investment Facilitation, MSMEs, gender and trade, which lacked a mandate or consensus, were, however, not taken forward.
Nevertheless, a large group of members have formed informal working groups to take forward the discussions on these issues at the WTO. Nearly 70 countries have signed a declaration stating that they would continue to engage on the new issues like e-commerce, investment facilitation and MSMEs at the WTO.
These informal groups would have no negotiating mandate and will not be in a position to frame rules in these sectors. But these will be pressure groups that will work to get these issues on the table for commencing a work programme at the WTO at the next Ministerial Conference.
Though the Ministerial ended in a stalemate, the Chairperson, Minister Susana Malcorra of Argentina in her remarks mentioned the widely expressed support for the multilateral trading system and the commitment to move forward on various areas of work in the WTO.
India will look forward to taking up the issue of public stock holding for food security issues at Geneva so that it can find a permanent solution on this outstanding issue. On other issues like e-commerce, officials said that India had provided substantial inputs and will continue to remain engaged in the discussions at Geneva.