The Hindu Business Line : Deadlocked on Doha

It is now clear that as far as the Doha Development Round negotiations are concerned the wood has been lost sight of because of the trees. In this instance, the wood is nothing else but the Doha Development Agenda, finalised in November 2001, with the all-encompassing objective of placing the interests of the developing countries forming a majority of the World Trade Organisation membership "at the heart of the Work Programme" adopted by the Doha Declaration.

All indications are that the objective has been overtaken by the insatiable thirst of the rich in particular to get the better of the developing economies in the battle for specific import tariff and subsidy concessions, an exercise which has catapulted to centre-stage the working of the nexus of national lobbies, most of which are incapable of seeing anything beyond their own noses. The Commerce Minister, Mr Kamal Nath, needs to be complimented for focusing on this aspect of the issue with his repeated warnings that there were clear signs of the negotiations losing sight of the over-arching development dimension of the Doha exercise. Among other things, the Doha Declaration committed the Round to ensuring that developing countries (including the least-developed nations) would "secure a share in the growth of world trade commensurate with the needs of their economic development." Since it is beyond argument that the development requirements of the world's poor are immeasurably greater than those of the industrialised countries, it was to be expected that capitals such as Washington and Brussels would concede proportionately more ground than their poor counterparts in the quest for arriving at an agreement. But this has not been the case so far. On the contrary, the quid pro quo principle has been highlighted in the insistence of the rich that they are not prepared to recede any further on the farm subsidy and tariff fronts unless the poor make matching concessions in market-access for non-agricultural products (NAMA).

It has been argued that the bloc led by Brazil and India could have conceded some more ground in the nitty-gritty of the negotiations in the interest of resurrecting the Doha Round which, in the longer run, would be of great help to the trade interests of the poor countries. Clearly, such a strategy would work only if there is absolute certainty that players such as the US and the EU are interested in continuing to work with the WTO as a body regulating world trade. Sadly, there is no such confidence at the moment which surely does not augur well for the international trading framework in the years ahead.