Delhi meet infuses new life into Doha talks

India’s efforts to rejuvenate Doha round talks of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) have met with a great success with trade ministers from key member countries agreeing to launch formal negotiations soon in a full ministerial meeting at Geneva later this month.

Commerce & industry minister Anand Sharma said after the meet that there had been a breakthrough in the talks and the impasse on re-starting negotiations was over. Trade ministers have also set a deadline of 2010 to conclude the negotiations. Official level talks will resume in Geneva within 10 days, which will prepare grounds for the next ministerial meet.

India has also made sure that the negotiations on trade in services, which constitute the most important segment for India, start simultaneously. India will try to get commitments from its trading partners, especially the US and European Union, on outsourcing and movement of professionals and workers.

The negotiations ended in a failure last year after the US and developing countries led by India could not find a common ground on the issue of safeguards mechanism, meant to protect the farmers from developing countries in case of a surge in imports of farm commodities occur. There were also some unresolved issues related to farm subsidies by the developed world and import restrictions on manufactured goods by developing nations. India had called the just concluded meet in Delhi to break the ice on such issues and develop a consensus on restart of negotiations, an objective well achieved in the two day gathering.