The Hindu Business Line : India for highest cuts in domestic farm support in US, Japan, EU

INDIA on Tuesday made it clear that the three largest distorters in global farm trade, the European Union, Japan and the United States, should be subject to the highest cuts in their domestic support measures to their farmers.

Disclosing this at a two-day workshop on `Pre-Hong Kong Ministerial Meeting Consultation: Agriculture Negotiations', the Commerce Secretary, Mr S.N. Menon, said that in domestic support, India and the G-20 have presented a logical structure for the cuts in the aggregate measure of support (AMS), de minimis and over all trade-distorting support.

"We believe that the concept of harmonisation of the levels of permitted trade-distorting domestic support using the tiered formula, both in overall support as well as in the AMS, remains central to achieve the numbers that will determine the ambition," Mr Menon said in his inaugural address to the stakeholder consultation workshop jointly organised by the Unctad-India and DFID of the UK.

He acknowledged that blue box (direct payments to farmers under production-limiting programmes that are exempt from reduction commitments) is intended only to facilitate reform away from amber box support (domestic support measures that have trade-distorting effects or effects on production and are subject to reduction commitments).

Hence, he said, it is critical that the criteria for blue box are negotiated to ensure that the mandated objective of "less trade-distorting than the amber box" is secured.

Accordingly, Mr Menon observed, programmes that are based on administered prices and are product-linked must be disciplined to fulfil the mandate.

Similarly, for the green box (exempt from reduction commitments as they are deemed to have `no or at least minimal' trade-distorting effects or effects on production), he said, "our approach is to plug loopholes in the existing disciplines such that the fundamental criteria of `no or at best minimal" trade distorting effect is met.

Besides, where developing country programmes meeting this criteria are not captured, these must be negotiated into the green box, he said.

Mr Menon called for effective and operational special and differential (S&D) treatment for developing countries.

He said recourse to special product and special support measures remain central to safeguarding food and livelihood security and rural development needs of developing countries.

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