India Presses for Inclusion in WTO Talks
March 26, 2009 India has said it should be included in the exclusive meetings which the US has been holding with West African cotton producing countries on subsidy cuts as part of the on-going Doha round of multilateral trade talks at the World Trade Organization (WTO). As India is the second largest cotton producing country in the world, it said that it should be made part of all discussions on reduction of the high US subsidies on cotton.
Addressing a seminar on threat to multilateralism in the evolving global scenario organized by Ficci on Friday, commerce additional secretary R. Gopalan said that India wants to be part of the discussions taking place between the four cotton countries (which includes Benin, Chad, Burkina Faso and Mali) and the US on subsidy reductions in cotton. “We, too, want to be part of the discussions as we too are a major cotton producing country. We cannot be kept out of the talks,” he said.
The US, which is the third largest producer of cotton after China and India, gives about $5 billion worth of subsidies to its farmers every year. It has severely hurt cotton producers in African countries as they have been wiped out by the cheap subsidies cotton exported by the US.
The US exports about half of the 18 million bales produced by its farmers. The WTO had ruled in 2004 that the subsidies given by the US to its cotton farmers were unfair and it put cotton farmers in less developed countries at a disadvantage. Following the ruling, West African countries had proposed in 2006 that US cotton subsidies should be reduced by 82.2 percent, against a 60 percent fall in other farm subsidies, as part of the Doha round. The US is yet to give its reaction to the proposal.
Unless the issue of cotton gets resolved, it will not be possible to conclude the Doha round which started in November 2001. Another major issue which needs to be settled in the round is the level of protection which should be given to developing country farmers to protect them against import surges.
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