NAIROBI NEGOTIATIONS & INDIA

The WTO held its 10th Ministerial Conference in Nairobi, Kenya during 15– 19 December 2015. This was the first such meeting to be hosted by an African nation. The outcomes of the Conference, referred to as the Nairobi Package, are as given below20:

(i) The Nairobi Declaration reflects divergence amongst the WTO membership on the relevance of reaffirming the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) as the basis of future negotiations. This was despite the fact that India, along with many other developing countries, from groups such as the G-33, LDCs, and the Africa Group, wanted a reaffirmation of the mandate of the Doha Round. While reflecting that there are divergences, the Ministerial Declaration also notes the “strong commitment of all Members to advance negotiations on the remaining Doha issues”. It records that WTO work would maintain development at

its centre. It also reaffirms that provisions for special and differential treatment shall remain integral.

(ii) As the future of the Doha Round appeared in doubt, India sought and succeeded in obtaining a re-affirmative Ministerial Decision on Public Stockholding for Food Security Purposes honouring both the Bali Ministerial and General Council Decisions. The decision commits members to engage constructively in finding a permanent solution to this issue.

(iii) A large group of developing countries has long been seeking an SSM (Special Safeguard Mechanism) for agricultural products. In order to ensure that this issue remains on the agenda of future discussion in the WTO, India negotiated a Ministerial Decision which recognizes that developing countries will have the right to have recourse to an SSM as envisaged in the mandate. Members will continue to negotiate the mechanism in dedicated sessions of the Committee on Agriculture in Special Session.

(iv) It was also agreed to the elimination of agricultural export subsidies subject to the preservation of special and differential treatment for developing countries such as a longer phase-out period for transportation and marketing export subsidies for exporting agricultural products. Developed countries have committed to removing export subsidies immediately, except for a few agricultural products, and developing countries will do so by 2018.

(v) Developing countries will keep the flexibility to cover marketing and transport subsidies for agriculture exports until the end of 2023, and the LDCs and net food-importing developing countries would have additional time to cut such export subsidies. The Ministerial Decision contains disciplines to ensure that other export policies are not used as a disguised form of subsidies. These disciplines include—

(a) terms to limit the benefits of financing support to agriculture exporters;

(b) rules on state enterprises engaging in agriculture trade; and

(vi) One of the Decisions adopted extends the relevant provision to prevent ‘ever-greening’ of patents in the pharmaceuticals sector. This decision would help in maintaining an affordable and accessible supply of generic medicines.

(vii) India supported outcomes on issues of interest to LDCs including enhanced preferential rules of origin for LDCs and preferential treatment for LDC services providers. India already offers duty-free, quota-free access scheme to all LDCs, which provides a comprehensive coverage with simple, transparent and liberal rules of origin. India has also recently (late 2015) made available substantial and commercially meaningful preferences in services to LDCs.

(viii) The issue of fisheries subsidies could not be resolved due to lack of consensus. Including India, several other countries (China, Egypt, South Africa, Korea and Saudi Arabia, etc) were opposed to disciplining rules on fisheries subsidies due to the lack of clarity.

(ix) On the issue of Anti-dumping, India strongly opposed a proposal that would give greater power to the WTO’s Anti-Dumping Committee to review Members’ practices. Due to lack of convergence, no outcome was achieved.

(x) A group of 53 WTO members, including both developed and developing countries, agreed on the timetable for implementing a deal to eliminate tariffs on 201 Information Technology products. This duty-free market will be available to all WTO members (even to India, which was not party to the agreement).

(xi) As regards the introduction of other new issues for discussion, the Declaration acknowledges the differences in views and states that any decision to launch negotiations multilaterally on such issues would need to be agreed by all Members. The rich (developed) countries wanted the introduction of new issues of their interests which included—global value chain, e-commerce, competition laws, labour, environment and investments.