DOHA ROUND MUST ADDRESS INDIA’S
CONCERNS – JAITLEY
PASCAL
LAMY MEETS ARUN JAITLEY – SIGNALS EU’s WILLINGNESS TO MOVE FORWARD
ON AREAS OF INDIA’s CONCERN
Shri Arun Jaitley,
Union Minister of Commerce & Industry and Law & Justice,
has said that India’s concerns in the area of market access including
less than full reciprocity in tariff reduction commitments and
other Special & Differential (S&D) Treatment provisions
for the developing countries must be addressed on priority in
the current round of multilateral trade negotiations. A wide range
of multilateral and bilateral trade issues were discussed when
the European Union Trade Commissioner, Mr. Pascal Lamy, met Shri
Jaitley here this morning. Mr. Lamy signalled the EU’s willingness
to move forward on a number of areas of concern to India including
modalities for agriculture and non-agriculture market access;
movement of natural persons under Mode-4 and textiles. Mr. Lamy
reiterated the EU’s commitment to the phase out of textile quotas
by the end of 2004 as mandated and noted EU’s common position
with India on TRIPs and Public Health.
Outlining India’s
priorities, Shri Jaitley pointed out that despite some broad areas
of convergence, India had domestic concerns which were not necessarily
dictated by politics but by social reality and cited the example
of agriculture in India where each product could affect the lives
of millions of people dependent on agriculture for their livelihood.
In the non-agricultural sector, he mentioned the autonomous process
of tariff reduction whereby the peak tariffs in India had been
reduced to around 25% while underlining that the extent of reduction
by the developed and developing countries would have to be different
with built-in mechanism for special safeguards for developing
countries like India. Mr. Lamy said that the EU would be willing
to consider the specific formula being worked out by India for
the developing countries in this regard. "We are ready to move
on things which are important to you even if there are technical
problems here and there on S&D treatment and Implementation
Issues", Mr. Lamy said.
On textiles, it was
indicated that bilateral discussions would take place shortly
on a new textile package covering the issues of enhanced quotas
etc. On the GSP issue, Secretary (Textiles), Shri S.B. Mohapatra
gave figures to show that India’s exports to the EU had been affected
by the GSP concession being extended to competitors. Mr. Lamy
tried to explain on the basis of the EU data that India had not
lost its market share but rather its textile exports to the EU
had increased and, therefore, the GSP matter had not affected
India’s trade with the EU. However, he also said that Pakistan
was likely to graduate – beyond the threshold level of exports
– in the near future.
