WTO talks still stuck on safeguards.

dequate protection for poor farmers against import surges remains a tricky issue in the ongoing global trade negotiations at the WTO with farm goods exporting developed countries continuing to express concerns over the measure blocking genuine imports.

The issue that led to the collapse of the talks in 2008 is of great importance to developing countries such as India that have a large agrarian population.

In a recent meeting of the WTO committee on agriculture (CoA) in Geneva, Australia and Canada stated that they were not very comfortable with the proposed safeguards arguing theycould be misused. The proposed special safeguard measures or SSMs would allow developing countries to raise tariffs temporarily to fend off import surges or to shield farmers from price falls.

“The developed countries are not willing to change their stance on the special safeguard measures which is so important for developing countries,” the official said.

The Doha round, which was launched in November 2001, is expected to yield gains worth an estimated $282 billion if members agree to bring down tariff and non-tariff barriers in goods and services as mandated.

While India and other members of the G-33 group of developing countries want the protection to be high, exporting countries want to keep it as low as possible.

They also raised the issue of the possibility of safeguards being used when there was actually no surge in imports.

“The concerns raised by exporting countries have been recognised by the WTO and the possibility of pro-rating to get around it is being examined. There is no reason why such countries should continue to have such an inflexible stand on SSMs,” the official said.

Pro-rating takes into account the effect of a special safeguard measure in an earlier period while calculating the trigger for the new safeguard.

This is important as imports in an earlier period when a safeguard was being used might be lower than usual and could exaggerate an import surge in a subsequent year, triggering the use of the safeguard again.

The CoA chairperson David Walker wants to hold more meetings to sort out the issue. “One thing is clear, till the matter of SSMs is resolved, there cannot be a deal in agriculture. It is actually a small issue with limited ramifications for developed countries which has been blown out of proportion by them,” the official said.

Source : economictimes.indiatimes.com