“This is something which we should examine... the world wonders why the oldest and the largest democracies cannot have an agreement in trade,” Mr Kamal Nath said at the India Economic Summit here.

He was responding to a question on whether an India-US free trade pact was feasible and commended the US delegate for “thinking of this” idea. The delegate, on his part, said he wanted to float the proposal in the US Congress.

Mr Kamal Nath said a rule-based multilateral trading system was as important to India as it was to the US and EU. “We need it more than any other stronger player,” he added. While admitting that US has sensitivities in agriculture, Mr Kamal Nath said that India have sensitivities of 650 million people who are in the farming sector and cannot have a subsidised market access which destabilise its farmers. 

He said India has to ensure that its small and infant industries were not thrown out in the open to face the competition of cheap goods from industrialised nations.

Remains optimistic
Pitching for changing the functioning of WTO as “more and more countries are getting involved in it,” he said, “multilateral rule-based system is here to stay. Bilateral agreements are only building blocks and they can not replace multilateral system.”

All those issues which cannot be discussed multilaterally, can be discussed in bilateral and regional pacts, he said. The Commerce Minister is also optimistic that Doha Round of trade talks would be concluded.