Commerce and Industry Minister, Suresh Prabhu, attended an Informal Gathering of World Trade Organisation (WTO) Ministers in Paris. Twenty-Eight (28) member countries of the WTO and the Director General of the WTO attended the informal meeting.
In his intervention, the Minister observed that there were already a number of Ministerial mandates to guide work at the WTO and negotiators have been working for years on many issues. He said that work should be resumed based on existing mandates, Declarations and decisions, expressing the belief that it would be counterproductive and harmful to the system to ignore the Ministerial mandates and all the work done so far and re-set the negotiations.
He emphasised that political engagement in the process was critical for moving forward and drew attention to the informal gathering hosted in New Delhi in March this year. He mentioned that almost all the participants at the New Delhi meeting were of the view that greater engagement was the only way forward.
The Minister cautioned that while some countries viewed plurilateral discussions as a stepping stone to multilateral agreements, such initiatives could, on the contrary, weaken the multilateral trading system and undermine the inclusive institutional structure of the WTO.
Suresh Prabhu pointed out that there is a Work Programme for E-commerce which provides a forum for discussion within the WTO. He said that India has been actively engaging in this even though it is premature to discuss binding multilateral rules for E-commerce.
Observing that the WTO already has a full agenda, he said that India has reservations about the introduction of new issues such as Investment Facilitation in the WTO lest fundamental issues in agriculture and development get neglected.
In conclusion, Suresh Prabhu expressed the view that such informal engagement at the political level could go a long way in deepening a mutual understanding of issues and concerns and finding ways of moving forward.
During his visit to Paris, the Commerce Minister also had meetings with the Australian Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment and the EU Trade Commissioner, during which various bilateral issues and ongoing trade negotiations were discussed. He also met the DG WTO and discussed the current international situation arising from various unilateral trade actions and counter actions and the challenges facing the WTO.
