India set for key WTO gains as meeting ends

The World Trade Organization (WTO) appeared to have agreed on continuing food and fishery subsidies after strong negotiations by India-led developing countries, who were also understood to have gained partially on patent waiver for Covid-19 vaccines along with exports, officials said late on Thursday.

The India-led group, however, was likely to concede one of its key demands to end moratorium on e-commerce that the developed counties enjoyed since 1998, an official said, asking not to be named. The developments came as the 12th ministerial conference (MC12) of WTO concluded after going into overtime amid tough negotiations.

An official announcement on the decisions was awaited late on Thursday as the final draft was to be approved by the member nations. A person involved in the deliberations said that, at the time of going to press, final details on the agreements were being hammered out.

India’s hectic parleys and its hard position on negotiations of key issues along with South Africa and other developing countries were likely to help secure key concessions at the 164-member multilateral forum on continuing food security schemes as before and unrestricted government support to fishing activities, people aware of the development said.

“India has agreed to support WTO’s World Food Programme (WFP) on humanitarian ground, but it will retain the power to ban exports of food grains in case of domestic need,” one person present in Geneva said on condition of anonymity.

India has made it clear that there would be no talks on any issue related to agriculture unless a permanent solution to public stockholding (PSH) limit is arrived at, he added. The WTO members had agreed to negotiate a permanent solution to this matter by the 11th ministerial in 2017.

One of the likely good outcomes was continuity of fishing subsidy. On fisheries, India wanted support for low-income countries where people fish for their livelihoods. However, some WTO members, particularly developed nations, wanted curbs on subsidies in this sector to discourage overfishing or unregulated fishing.

Earlier, while negotiating, Union commerce minister Piyush Goyal insisted that India and other developing countries should get differential treatment on fishing subsidies as compared to developed countries. “India, for every fisher family that we have, gives barely $15 in a year... and there are countries..., which give as high as $42,000, $65,000 & $75,000 to one fishermen family. That is the extent of disparity that is sought to be institutionalised through the current fisheries text,” he said at one of the MC12 meetings on Tuesday.

The WTO members also appeared to agree on patent waiver on Covid-19 vaccines for five years and to allow manufacturers to export. This would be a partial gain for India, which was pushing for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) waivers for entire therapeutics and diagnostics.

“As trade negotiations are based on the principle of give-and-take, India along with its partners has allowed moratorium on electronic transmission to continue till 2023 when MC13 will take place,” another person aware of the matter said. India has been opposing developed countries’ move to further extend customs duty moratorium on electronic transmission of goods and services under e-commerce as it was a losing proposition because most of the e-commerce giants belong to the developed countries such as the US, the UK and the EU. By one estimate, developing countries are losing over $10 billion in revenue on this count. It remains a major grey area.

According to people mentioned above, India’s tough position forced WTO to extend the meeting by one more day as, by the end of Wednesday evening MC12 appeared to be a failure, as there was no agreement on key issues.

After the 19-hour marathon meeting under the leadership of Goyal, the hope of a decision on many issues was visible till Thursday morning, the first person said. Any dissent by any country could have stalled the entire efforts that started from Sunday, he said.

Some agreements have been also reached on reforms in the functioning of the WTO, which was pushed by India and which is based on more democratic ways to arrive at a consensus, the person said.