NO NEGOTIATIONS ON SINGAPORE ISSUES WITHOUT EXPLICIT CONSENSUS
India has reiterated
today that there can be no negotiations on the Singapore issues
without explicit consensus on the modalities for negotiations
as per the Doha mandate. In a letter addressed to Mr. Pierre S.
Pettigrew, Minister for International Trade of Canada and Facilitator
for the Singapore issues at the Cancun Ministerial Conference,
Mr. Arun Jaitley, Minister of Commerce & Industry and Law
& Justice, Government of India, along with Ms. Dato´ Seri
Rafidah Aziz, Minister of International Trade & Industry,
Government of Malaysia, on behalf of the delegations from Antigua
& Barbuda, Bangladesh (on behalf of the LDCs), Barbados, Botswana,
Belize, Chine, Cuba, Dominica, Egypt, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti,
India, Indonesia, Jamaica, Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria, the Philippines,
St. Kitts & Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent & the Grenadines,
Surinam, Tanzania, Trinidad & Tobago, Uganda, Venezuela, Zambia
and Zimbabwe, have again underlined the concerns they have about
the impact of multilateral rules on the four new issues on their
domestic policies and consider that they yet to fully comprehend
the implications of having WTO rules on these four issues. These
concerns include, among others, implications for domestic policies
and availability of resources. Also, these issues are highly technical
and complex and require more analysis.
A number of
other countries, apart from the above, have also conveyed similar
views at the open-ended meeting of the Facilitation Group chaired
by Mr. Pettigrew. Hence, there is no explicit consensus on the
modalities for negotiations on Singapore issues, as mandated in
the Doha Declaration. The four Singapore issues are: Relationship
between Trade & Investment, Interaction between Trade &
Competition Policy, Transparency in Government Procurement and
Trade Facilitation.
Further, many
developing countries do not have the capacity to implement obligations
arising out of commitments that such multilateral rules would
entail, besides which there are also doubts on the benefits of
a multilateral framework on such issues.
The delegations
also have concerns about the process through which these issues
have been brought to the Cancun Ministerial without any prior
discussion on the modalities for negotiations.
Therefore, these
delegations have underlined their firm view that there is no option
other than the continuation of the clarification process and urged
that these concerns as outlined in the Annex to the letter be
incorporated into any revised of the Draft Cancun Ministerial
Declaration.
