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EU for India taking lead in WTO talks
By agencies
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Friday, 09 September 2005, 19:30 IST
NEW DELHI: With European Union showing some flexibility on agriculture, there appears to be a movement forward on the contentious multilateral trade issues ahead of the WTO Ministerial in Hongkong in December.
"We are going in the right direction on these (agriculture) and I welcome the guidance that India has been giving," EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said referring to G-20 developing countries farm proposal, which has been embraced by EU.
Speaking at the sixth India-EU Business summit, Mandelson said there was need to reach sensible conclusions on agriculture both in terms of market access and domestic support as well as export subsidies."
The G-20, which includes India, Brazil, China, South Africa, Egypt among other nations has proposed the elimination of export subsidies and a commitment to phase out domestic support in a time bound manner by developed countries to provide market access to developing nations.
"I believe sincerely that India will be a winner from greater openness. The opportunity to achieve that lies in the Doha Round, an the chance to materialize India's essential domestic reforms", he said asking India to join with EU to act with boldness and make the case for greater openness to the rest of the WTO membership.
On India's services offer, he said there was a case to open further especially services like retail.
Commerce Minister Kamal Nath said both India and EU shared the common objective of strengthening the multilateral trading system and were hopeful of bouquet of results from current WTO talks to provide developing countries better opportunities to use trade for fulfilling their development goals.