India, Egypt, others seek fairer WTO trading system amid food woes

New Delhi: India and Egypt, along with around 90 other countries have pushed to establish a fairer trading system at the World Trade Organization (WTO) and enhance domestic production amid the severe food and nutrition challenges being experienced by many net food-importing developing countries and least developed countries.

At a meeting of the Committee on Agriculture at the WTO on Thursday, India said that a permanent solution for food security is a long overdue mandate and insisted on a solution that the General Council can approve without waiting for the next ministerial conference of the multilateral trade body.

"The ACP (African, Caribbean and Pacific countries)Group, G33 Group, the African Group, and least developed countries demanded food security to be at the heart of the future agriculture negotiations," said a Geneva-based official.

They also stressed that more policy space is needed to tackle food insecurity, in particular a permanent solution on public stockholding for food security purposes along with a special safeguard mechanism to check sudden import surges and price drops.