Stalemate at WTO talks as India's concerns remain unheard

NAIROBI: The tenth ministerial conference of the WTO maybe headed for a wash out with no deal in sight favouring India and the developing countries.

Despite day long intensive negotiations among India, China, EU, the US and Brazil, there could be a no show for India as none of its concerns - reaffirmation of Doha, public stockholding and special safeguards mechanism- have been discussed till now.

Sources said that talks are hovering around export competition and agriculture only and hence, the talks are likely to get extended as against the the chair of the ministerial Amina Mohamed's claims that there is no crisis and a deal will be clinched in a few hours before the ministerial ends.

In fact, the draft being discussed in the one that had taken India by surprise yesterday as it had ignored all of its concerns.

While India has stuck to its stance of reaffirming the Doha development agenda, there is immense pressure on the country to give up its demands and cave in, especially because the ministerial is happening in Africa for the first time.

The next few hours will be a tightrope for India because it doesn't want to be seen as obstructionist or a deal breaker but simultaneously protect its interests.

"We have no differences with Africa," commerce minister Nirmala Sitharaman said but India is fighting its own battles in the small grouping since morning.

Sources also said that India insisted on the sanctity of all Doha decisions as the EU, US, Australia and Brazil are against its continuation.

"They have a problem everyone Doha is mentioned. They feel it that it leads to prejudging of issues because many members don't want to reaffirm it. Our concern is that this will raise questions on the sanctity of the earlier decisions also," a source said.

India is also insisting that some issues - related to export competition- are being given undue importance and being dealt with hastily even though they were not adequately discussed in Geneva.