Indian tariff regime remains complex, average duty rates rising:World Trade Organisation

NEW DELHI: India has made consistent efforts to liberalise and facilitate trade, but its tariff regime remains complex and the average duty rates have gone up over the past four years, the World Trade Organisation has said in a report. The simple average most favoured nation tariff rate rose to 13% in 2014-15, up from 12% in 2010-11, WTO said in the trade policy review report released on Tuesday.

“India’s trade policy is largely driven by domestic supply … this requires constant fine-tuning of policies, for example, through notifications by the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) and Customs, rendering the trade regime less predictable and creating additional costs,” it said.

The Geneva headquartered organisation also said that while India is a strong advocate of the multilateral trading system it is increasingly getting into a lot of regional trade pacts. “This is evidenced by the 15 agreements currently in force and its involvement in the negotiation of other agreements,” the report said.


India’s patents regime, a constant bone of contention between the United States and India, got WTO’s backing, with the report stating that India has so far issued just one compulsory licence although two more applications were received between 2012 and 2013.

“In March 2012, India issued its first and only compulsory licence (on certain anti-cancer medicine),” said the report. India has always maintained that its intellectual property rights laws are WTO compliant. On trade secrets protection, the report said that while there is no specific legislation regulating the protection of trade secrets the Indian judiciary has dealt with the issue on a case-by-case basis.

“Courts in India have ordered injunctions against disclosure and use of trade secrets by third parties and ordered the return of such confidential … information as well as compensation or damages for any losses suffered …,” it said. The US has been pushing India to come up with a separate legislation on trade secrets protection. India has taken several initiatives to modernise its IPR administration and continue its efforts to enforce IPRs, the report said.