Way short on resolving key issues, ‘limits room’ for future talks: Experts on WTO deal | Business News,The Indian Express
In the final pact, India’s demand for a permanent solution to the peace clause on breaching the limit on public stockholding and the government-to-government sales of food grains from central procurement have not been addressed.
Even as the World Trade Organization (WTO) ratified an “unprecedented” package of trade deals spanning health, food security and data transfers, the outcome is at best a mixed bag for countries such as India. Experts say the announcement by the government that it was happy with what it had been able to negotiate at Geneva could further limit the headroom for Indian negotiators in future parleys.
The biggest disappointment at the 12th Ministerial Conference — the highest decision-making body of the WTO — could be India’s inability to wrangle an originally proposed 25-year carve-out period on continuing government support to fishermen to build fishing infrastructure for its own fishermen, especially since most developed nations have already invested heavily in their fishing infrastructure through subsidies and countries such as India have lots of catching up to do especially as it announced a comprehensive subsidy scheme for fishermen just three years back.
On vaccine patents, the final deal included patent waivers to combat the pandemic, limited just to the output and export of vaccines that New Delhi had earlier described as “too late in the day” to tackle the pandemic. Therapeutics and diagnostics have been left out for now.
In the final pact, India’s demand for a permanent solution to the peace clause on breaching the limit on public stockholding and the government-to-government sales of food grains from central procurement have not been addressed. The restart of the dispute settlement body, another long-pending demand, continues to hang fire.
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