Consensus on discovering answer on meals safety situation at WTO meet subsequent month troublesome: GTRI

The difficulty will determine within the thirteenth ministerial convention (MC 13) at Abu Dhabi from February 26-29. MC is the very best resolution making physique of the 164-member Geneva-based international commerce physique WTO.

“MC13 won’t resolve the problem, displaying the battle between creating nations wanting to guard meals safety and developed nations pushing totally free commerce,” the GTRI stated in its report.

India’s high priorities for the MC13 embody securing a everlasting answer for its public stockholding (PSH) programme.

This programme seeks flexibility in meals procurement and pricing, essential for India’s meals safety wants.

The PSH programme is a coverage instrument underneath which the federal government procures crops like rice and wheat from farmers at minimal help value (MSP), and shops and distributes foodgrains to the poor, it stated. It added that by way of a programme referred to as Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana, India affords reasonably priced rice and wheat to greater than 800 million individuals, making it the largest programme of its variety. The report stated that India stresses the necessity for PSH for its massive, susceptible inhabitants and needs a everlasting answer from the MC13.

Meals procurement, stockholding, and distribution are essential to India’s meals safety technique.

India argued that discovering an answer to PSH was a long-standing WTO mandate and ought to be prioritized at MC13.

India made it clear that it might not have interaction in different agriculture discussions till a everlasting answer for PSH was reached.

“Reaching an settlement on PSH is troublesome as developed nations just like the US and the Cairns Group argue India’s programme might distort commerce,” GTRI Co-Founder Ajay Srivastava stated.

It additional added that India needs its PSH programmes to explicitly categorized as ‘Inexperienced Field’ help as it might would offer authorized assurance for implementing these programmes with out breaching WTO limits on home help.

“India additionally needs a freedom to set minimal costs and procurement ranges based mostly on India’s meals safety wants. This consists of avoiding limitations based mostly on a hard and fast proportion of manufacturing worth or reference costs based mostly on outdated information,” the report stated.

Apart from, the nation may additionally ask for a particular safeguard mechanism (SSM) for imposing short-term import restrictions to guard native farmers in response to surges in imports or value declines.

This is able to defend home farmers and markets from unfair competitors.

“India may additionally ask for separating PSH discussions from different agriculture negotiations on the WTO. This prevents developed nations from linking PSH concessions to trade-offs in different areas, akin to market entry,” it stated.