Geneva: India’s sherpas at the just-concluded G20 meeting in Antalya, Turkey, have failed to incorporate Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call for a permanent solution on public stockholding for food security and a special safeguard mechanism in agriculture for developing countries in the leaders communiqué, according to people familiar with the development.
The sherpas, led by the NITI Aayog chief Arvind Panagariya, also failed to include Modi’s strong message that “the Doha Development Agenda of 2001 is not closed without achieving these fundamental principles”.
A sherpa is a personal representative of a head of state at the summit.
Modi emphasized these two issues at the African leaders’ meeting in New Delhi on 29 October. He said, “We should also achieve a permanent solution on public stockholding for food security and a special safeguard mechanism in agriculture for developing countries.”
These two issues are central to the Nairobi ministerial meeting beginning on 15 December.
But India’s sherpas, including Panagariya and economic affairs secretary Shaktikanta Das, did not fight to incorporate Modi’s calls during elaborate talks for drafting the leaders’ communiqué at Antalya, according to people familiar with the development who declined to be named.
Instead, the sherpas merely let the language insisted on by the major industrialized nations dictate the final communiqué on the activities at the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the Nairobi ministerial.
Consequently, the Antalya statement of the Group of 20 advanced and emerging countries contained weak and ambiguous language as to what members of the WTO must accomplish at their tenth ministerial conference in Nairobi, Kenya.
“We are committed to working together for a successful Nairobi ministerial meeting that has a balanced set of outcomes, including on the Doha Development Agenda, and provides clear guidance to post-Nairobi work,” the leaders said in paragraph 12 of the communique.
The leaders did not specify what would constitute “a balanced set of outcomes” at a time when WTO members remain sharply divided on the proposed outcomes.
While India and China, along with an overwhelming majority of developing and poor countries, have demanded a special safeguards mechanism and a permanent solution for public stockholding programmes for food security at the Nairobi ministerial, the US and the European Union, with other industrialized and some developing countries, have ruled out any outcome on these two deliverables.
Even Brazil, which forged the G20 coalition of developing countries during the Doha negotiations in 2003 for bringing a developmental dimension to global farm trade, has now joined ranks with the US and the EU to oppose demands raised by Indonesia, India, China and other developing countries on a special safeguard mechanism and public stockholding programmes for food security.
In an inexplicable development on Monday, Brazil and the EU circulated a joint negotiating proposal for the first time in the Doha negotiations that seeks outcomes in the export competition pillar that covers elimination of export subsidies, stringent disciplines for export credits, food aid, and state trading enterprises.
The proposal by Brazil and the EU seeks major “adjustments” in the revised 2008 modalities to ensure the US is let off the hook in disciplining its trade-distorting export credits and food aid, according to several trade envoys familiar with the proposal. They declined to be identified.
Last Friday, Brazil, the EU and the US rejected India’s demand for an outcome on a special safeguard mechanism at the Nairobi meeting on the ground that issues concerning market access for agricultural products will not be discussed at the Nairobi meeting.
At that meeting, India asked the chair for Doha agriculture negotiations Ambassador Vangelis Vitalis of New Zealand: “Is it not equally fundamental to pull out one of the pillars of the agriculture negotiations thereby disturbing the balance of give and take that existed in Rev. 4 as Rev. 4 is being taken as the basis for the export competition discussions?”
The Rev 4 refers to the 2008 revised draft modalities for agriculture.
“How politically possible will it be for us to present a package, which involves payments in all areas and gains in none,” India asked at the meeting.
Against this backdrop, the G20 leaders’ statement appears wishy-washy, without reflecting the demands of a large majority of countries at the WTO, said a trade envoy who asked not to be identified.
Further, the communiqué merely said, “We will also need to increase our efforts to implement all the elements of the Bali package, including those on agriculture, development, public stockholding as well as the prompt ratification and implementation of the Trade Facilitation Agreement.”
This is an erroneous message, according to the envoy, as the issues for the Nairobi meeting are not merely about the implementation of the elements of the Bali package but more importantly, about concluding binding decisions in several areas.
These decisions include duty-free and quota-free market access for the poorest countries, simplification of preferential rules of origin for the least-developed countries, resolution of problems encountered by the cotton-four countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Chad), and a permanent solution for public stockholding programmes for food security. All these issues are being set aside because of intense opposition from the US, the EU, Japan, Canada and other industrial nations.
The US, the EU and Japan have also stated their goal to close the Doha negotiations at the Nairobi meeting.
The G20 communique merely said the Nairobi meeting will provide “guidance to post-Nairobi work” instead of reiterating that “the Doha Development Agenda of 2001 is not closed without achieving these fundamental principles”.