India for development & permanent solution at WTO, against non-trade issues

India on Monday called on the World Trade Organizarion (WTO) members to find a permanent solution to the long-pending public food stockpile issue, saying it is directly related to achieve the sustainable development goal of zero hunger by 2030 while insisting that the trade body is not the right forum to
negotiate non-trade issues such as climate, gender and labour.

On the first day of the thirteenth Ministerial Conference (MC13) of the WTO in Abu Dhabi, commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal said that India “firmly believes that any measures taken to combat climate change, including unilateral ones, should not constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination or a disguised restriction on international trade”.


“I re-emphasize that the development agenda would remain incomplete without a permanent solution on Public Stockholding (PSH) for food security purposes which is directly related to achieving Sustainable Development Goal of Zero Hunger by 2030,” he said, adding that this has been and continues to be a long-pending issue since the last few decades.

“Despite having a clear mandate agreed by us in the past MCs, finding a permanent solution on PSH remains an unaccomplished agenda on which we have to deliver in MC13,” Goyal said.

Stressing that India largely undertakes sustenance fishing which addresses hunger, poverty, food and nutrition insecurity of millions of traditional fishers, the minister said that sustainably harnessing fishing resources is a problem of a magnitude that requires a global consensus, taking into account the interests of disciplined nations like India.

Goyal insisted that any discussion on WTO reforms must incorporate consensus-based decision-making and special and differential treatment (S&DT) for emerging economies.

On the opening day, the Indian delegation was led by commerce secretary Sunil Barthwal.

India asserted that the developing countries seek appropriate policy space to find solutions to their concerns, some of which have been unaddressed for a long time and that developing countries require flexibility in the existing WTO agreements to overcome the constraints faced by them in their industrialization.

“India expressed concerns on the concerted attempt to club long standing development issues like policy space for industrial development with the new issues of Trade and Industrial policy,” the commerce and industry ministry said in a statement, adding that such measures have negative spillover effect on the trade interests of developing countries.

At the opening session, WTO Director General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala described the the atmosphere as “tougher” than the WTO's previous ministerial meeting in 2022 and called on ministers to “roll up their sleeves” and complete negotiations.

“Let's not pretend that any of this will be easy,” Okonjo-Iweala said in her opening speech.