Africa wants India to lead

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Africa wants India to lead battle at WTO

19.33 IST 02nd Feb 2003

 

By IndiaExpress Bureau

 

Several African countries want India to lead the campaign to

safeguard the interests of the developing nations, encouraged by New

Delhi's tough stand at the recently-concluded Geneva parleys on

agriculture at World Trade Organization (WTO).

 

More than a dozen African countries including Zimbabwe, Kenya,

Uganda, Nigeria and Morocco have urged India to take a lead in all

future WTO negotiations on agriculture to build a common strategy

against flooding of farm items from advanced nations threatening

their domestic agriculture.

 

The move has come a few weeks before the WTO mini ministerial meeting

is scheduled to take place in Tokyo later in February.

 

The fact that India will send for the first time both Commerce And

Agriculture Ministers Arun Jaitley and Ajit Singh respectively to the

mini ministerial beginning on February 14 shows the importance it

attaches to the meet.

 

"Following our bold stand and systematic lobbying for the cause of

developing countries at Geneva, many African nations want India to

take a lead at WTO to safeguard their farm sector," Mr. Ajit Singh,

who led the Indian delegation to Geneva negotiations, said.

 

Describing the outcome of the Geneva talks as "highly fruitful", he

said India would strive for an effective networking with like-minded

countries including those from the cairns group for dismantling of

farm subsidies in advanced countries and improved market access to

third world.

 

"Apart from African countries, many others are also in agreement with

us on the need for special safeguards to protect agriculture in the

developing world as also address the concerns of food security," said

Mr. Singh.

 

Mr. Singh predicted that there would be "a lot of give and take and

hard bargaining" at the three- day Tokyo conference.

 

"Now many countries in Africa and elsewhere realize that their

agriculture has become highly vulnerable to cheap imports and… they

want reasonably high level of tariff to check dumping," he said.

 

India, he said, wanted specific rules to be established to govern

export credit, guarantee, loans, insurance and food aid.