India joins forum on S’pore issues

As many as 10 countries, including India, China, Malaysia and Kenya, have come together to form an informal group to arrive at a common platform on the four Singapore issues being discussed at the World Trade Organisation. The first meeting of the group was convened by Malaysia last week. Other members of the group are Uganda, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, Philippines, Egypt and Jamaica. The issues being discussed are investment, competition policy, transparency in government procurement and trade facilitation.

Commerce ministry officials said there was a possibility of more members joining in. While the members in the group do not share a common position on the Singapore issues, officials said the objective was to discuss all points of views and arrive at a common platform. The discussions would go on not only till the fifth ministerial meet in Cancun in September but even beyond that, officials added. India’s official stand on Singapore issues is that it is not ready to enter into negotiations yet, as the issues’ structure and content are still unclear.

Officials said that in the area of investment, there was confusion on the scope and definition of investment. While some countries like Japan insist that it should be confined to foreign direct investment that contributes to trade, some like the US and Canada are pushing for the inclusion of portfolio investment. In case of pre-establishment rules, there is no clarity on sovereignty and policy space. In the area of competition policy, officials said that it needs to be clarified whether it applied to both international and national cartels and, if yes, what kind of multilateral arrangement would be framed for it. The working group on government procurement has not managed to define the scope of transparency in government procurement and there is no definite view on the threshold levels or on whether it would apply to entities other than federal governments, officials pointed out.