Cabinet leaves its WTO stand for another day

Another meeting is expected to take place on Wednesday. Only after this meeting will the Commerce Minister be given the mandate on negotiations. Since the agenda papers for the Cabinet meeting was circulated only this afternoon, not giving ministers enough time for detail, a decision was put off. The main reason, however, was that the government did not want to take chances with a hurried decision as Left parties are keeping a close watch on these issues.

The Cabinet was notified only this morning as Commerce Minister Kamal Nath is expected to leave for an UNCTAD meeting in Brazil soon and needs to be given a mandate for negotiating issues of India’s concerns with other members of the developing world that make up the G-20.

The Cabinet’s decision to form a Group of Ministers apart from the specially constituted Cabinet Committee on WTO is a signal that anything relating to agriculture would be handled with extreme care.

The cabinet was expected to mandate Kamal Nath with India’s negotiation strategy on agriculture products in return for market access for non-agri products by reducing tariffs and duties. The proposal included negotiating an appropriate formula that would include the principle of less than ‘‘full reciprocity’’ by India for every slab of duties cut by developed countries. For certain products, the cabinet was expected to decide binding tariffs to protect farmers from import competition. The meeting was also supposed to look at sectoral tariffs.

CPI(M)’s Nilotpal Basu said: ‘‘While WTO is among the few areas where we were in consensus with the NDA , we want this process to be amplified further when government meets the G-20 countries. Agriculture not only affects food security but also livelihood of 70 pc of the population. Coordination on these issues will be critical for the government and could be done from the coordination committee for the Common Minimum Programme.”