DOHA DEVELOPMENT ROUND

WORLD TRADE ORGANISATION

History:• Officially commenced on 1st January 1995.• Replaced the GATT with 153 member countries.• Represents 97 % of World trade.• Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.• Governed by a ministerial conference, meeting every two years, a General Council and a Director-General

Objective:• Supervise and Liberalize International Trade.• Provides a framework for negotiating and formalizing trade agreements.• Dispute resolution process aimed at enforcing participants' adherence to WTO

DOHA DEVELOPMENTAL ROUNDHistory:

• Launched at the fourth ministerial conference in Doha, Qatar in November 2001.• Succeeded the Uruguay round and the three ministerial conferences at Singapore (1996), Geneva (1998) and Seattle (1999).

Objectives:• Lower trade barriers around the world.

• Committing all countries to negotiations opening agricultural and manufacturing markets, as well as trade-in-services (GATS) negotiations and expanded intellectual property regulation (TRIPS).

• Make trade rules fairer for developing countries

KEY ISSUES AT DOHA

• Agriculture has become the linchpin of the agenda for both developing and developed countries

• Compulsory licensing of medicines and patent protection

• A review of provisions giving special and differential treatment to developing countries.

• Resolve problems that developing countries are having in implementing current trade obligations.

• Key Interests for ASEAN countries – Greater market access for industrial goods. Trade facilitation. Anti dumping and subsidies. Technical Co-operation. Effective dispute settlement mechanism

Hong Kong Conference 2005• Countries agreed to phase out all their agricultural export

subsidies by the end of 2013.• Agreement to introduce duty free, tariff free access for

goods.

Geneva Conference 2008• Negotiation over the special safeguard mechanism.• The negotiations collapsed on July 29 over issues of

agricultural trade between the United States, India, and China.

Geneva Conference 2009• On 26 May 2009, agreed to hold a seventh WTO ministerial

conference session in Geneva from 30 November–3 December 2009. • "The WTO, the Multilateral Trading System and the Current Global

Economic Environment"

INTERESTS OF INDIA• Accelerating integration with world economy (Globalization).• Foster more rapid growth and poverty reduction.• Expand access to World Markets.• Voice in formulation of rules and Decision Making in the WTO.• Guarding against the intrusion of non-traded matters in WTO.

BENEFITS TO INDIA

• Increase in India’s textile & clothing exports due to the phasing out of MFA (in 2005).• The reduction in agricultural subsidies & barriers to export of agriculture products, agricultural exports from India also increased.• Market access to a number of developing countries without trade discrimination increased.

Disadvantages for India

• TRIPs agreement went against the Indian Patents Act (1970)• Introduction of product patents in India lead to hike in drug prices by the MNCs. Hence the poor were left with no generic option• Extension of intellectual property right to agriculture has negative effects on India and Indian research institutions• Application of TRIMs agreement undermines any plan or strategy of self reliant growth based on local technology.• Service sectors in India are backward compared to the service sectors in developed countries. Hence inclusion of trade in services is detrimental to the interest of India.• The MFN clause proved to be detrimental to India’s interest & provided grounds for Chinese invasion in Indian market through dumping.

Unaddressed Issues

•In order not to discredit itself, globalization would have to squarely address sustainable development and poverty reduction .

• There must be an attempt to link the strategies of development to something more fundamental, the ends of economic and social development .

• The international trade rules are underpinned by an insufficient appreciation of the adverse impact of rapid liberalization, if it does not pay adequate attention to the need to reduce asset and income inequalities.

• Without substantial investment in the capacity to supply and, equally important, a guaranteed safety net against falling prices and import surges, sudden liberalization would expose the constituents to unbearable risk.

• One of the key issues is the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA).

• Areas related to Agriculture-Market Access, Domestic Support, export Competition, Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights .

• 40 to 50 % of support to the farmers in the form of Green Box subsidies.

• Developed countries allowed to retain 80% of their subsidies while developing countries can subsidize their farmers not more than 10%.

• Increasing dependency on imports for food grains could bring strain on external payment position of these countries.

Agriculture Issues in Developing Nations