Developed nations must deliver cuts: India
By agencies   |   Monday, 28 November 2005, 20:30 IST
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NEW DELHI: India has made it clear that agriculture is central to any deal at the World Trade Organization (WTO) and developed countries must deliver real cuts in farm subsidies for any movement in trade talks. "Agriculture was central to trade talks...Developed countries must deliver real cuts. As long as box shifting (shifting subsidies from one category to another) continues the situation will not improve, no matter what developed countries say about reducing subsidies. Only if there is convergence in agriculture will other areas like Non-Agriculture Market Access move and there could be no-trade off," Commerce Secretary S N Menon said. With two weeks left for the Ministerial meeting at Hong Kong, he said no one wanted the meeting to fail like Cancun. "It (failure) would be terrible for multilateral trade... It would be bad for World Trade Organization as an institution and also for developing countries like India, which want inequities in global trade to be addressed... "But with divergences remaining, the idea was to reduce expectations without reducing ambition from the Ministerial," he said.

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