Search the Internet          Tips  Sites: Finance, Investment

Pak supports India on implementation issue, development agenda

India found an ally in Pakistan, which asserted that the World Trade Organisation ought to sort out the implementation issues and development agenda before talking about new issues at the fourth ministerial meeting now underway in Doha.

"How can we have faith in the new issues when we don't have faith in the implementation of the old ones," the Pakistan Commerce Minister Abdul Razak Dawood told reporters on the sidelines of the WTO conference.

Asserting that the draft ministerial declaration did not reflect the concerns and interests of the developing nations, Dawood said, "in this regard we should seek to promote the alternative proposals including those circulated by Cuba, India and other members of the Like-Minded Group and other developing countries.

The LMG, which has been formed at the initiative of Pakistan includes a dozen developing countries and it held a meeting on Friday to take a united stand on WTO issues.

The group has called for a comprehensive ministerial decision for the resolution of the implementation concerns and demanded that the outcome of the conference should be based on consensus of all the 142 member countries.

"Consensus is particularly essential on proposals and mandate for new negotiations," Dawood said.

The Trade Ministers of India, Cuba, Kenya, Tanzania, Honduras, Dominican Republic, Zimbabwe, Egypt, Mauritius and Pakistan, who are part of the LMG, have expressed their deep disappointment with the draft declaration saying it did not reflect the concerns and interests of the developing countries.

"At a time when we thought we had finished with the labour standards issue, it has come up again in the preamble in a way that makes it ready for being taken up for discussion. Labour is the only competitive advantage that developing nation like Pakistan has. The current move is aimed at taking away the advantage," he said.

He was also critical of the stand taken by the developed countries on environmental issues and said, "tomorrow when we want to undertake developmental projects, we would be told not to do so. We don't have the resources to develop otherwise and you know who have been the biggest polluters of the world," he said.

"Similarly, tariff peaks, tariff escalation and other non-tariff measures impeding market access against exports from developing countries must be eliminated," he said.

ALSO READ:
India and the WTO: News and issues