Officials, on Thursday, indicated hectic parleys are on between key WTO players, including India, to explore the possibility of holding a Ministerial Meeting in the middle of October.
Ministerial Meeting, comprising trade ministers of 150 member countries, is the highest policy-making organ of World Trade Organisation and generally meets once in two years to take stock of multilateral trade negotiations. “We expect some progress if WTO Chief Pascal Lamy brings some changes in the NAMA text, as the present text is considered ‘fundamentally flawed and biased’ by 110 members,” an official said.
The Doha Round of negotiations, launched in 2001, had to conclude by end of 2004 but has missed several deadlines. After the collapse of G-4 talks between the US, EU, India and Brazil in June this year, Mr Lamy made renewed efforts to bring the round on the rails. He succeeded in getting prepared the drafts on Agriculture and NAMA.
Text a good basis
India has accepted the agriculture text as a “good basis for further negotiations”, but rejected the proposals seeking higher duty cuts on industrial products by developing nations.
For the Doha Round to complete by the end of this year, the modalities for reducing tariffs and subsidies must be ready in the next few months. If officials are successful in finalising these modalities, chances for the Ministerial Meeting will improve. It would be at this meeting that a ‘Pledging Conference’ would be held for negotiations on opening global market for services, an area of immense interest to India.  Sources said countries like India want talks on all aspects such as agriculture, NAMA, services and rules to proceed in tandem, and no separate agreement on any of these. The present rounds of talks at Geneva, which is expected to go on till mid October, will focus on finalising the modalities for reducing farm tariffs and subsidies as well.
According to new timetable, sources said, WTO members will try to first finalise the modalities for completing farm and industrial sector talks. Once that is done, a Ministerial meeting of 150 countries is likely to be convened in the first session to “validate what the officials have achieved.”
In the second round, they will flag services and rules as the next area on which a consensus is required and to “give directions” to the officials to put talks on fast track, they said.