WTO: India targets Doha curtain-raiser

NEW DELHI: An informal meeting of the trade ministers of some World Trade Organisation members in New Delhi in September is expected to set the ball rolling for serious negotiations in Geneva later in the month for concluding the on-going Doha round of trade talks.

The Doha round, which seeks to frame rules for further opening-up of markets for farm and industrial products and services, received a setback in July last year when a meeting of key members broke down due to disagreement between the US and India over certain issues.

The WTO committees on agriculture and industrial (Nama) goods are expected to hold a series of consultations after the New Delhi meeting to break the dead-lock on issues such as the level of protection to be provided to poor farmers and voluntary elimination of tariffs on select industrial goods. Disagreement over the two issues was responsible for the stalemate at the mini-ministerial meet in Geneva last July.

If these tricky issues get settled before November, it is possible to fix a tentative date to conclude the Doha round of talks at the formal ministerial meeting of the WTO in Geneva scheduled for late November. The Doha round kicked off in Qatar���s capital in November 2001.

The New Delhi meeting, tentatively scheduled on September 3-4, will be attended by more than twenty member-countries, including the US, the EU, China, Brazil and South Africa. ���Although confirmations are still coming in, it is expected that the New Delhi meeting will be much bigger than the G-20 meeting earlier this year,��� a commerce department official told ET.

Top WTO officials, including director general Pascal Lamy, are expected to attend the meeting. Chairman of the committee on agriculture David Walker has already announced that he will resume his consultations after his return from New Delhi.