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India to oppose competition laws at OECD meet

Ranvir Nayar, in Paris

India is expected to reiterate its opposition to the inclusion of competition laws in World Trade Organisation negotiations in Paris this week.

Law Minister Arun Jaitley is one of the guest speakers at the conference organised by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, a grouping of 30 industrialised countries.

The OECD recently set up the Global Forum on Competition aimed at bringing together, on a regular basis, high-level officials from nearly 60 countries, including non-members like India, China, Brazil, Russia and Egypt.

The timing of the first meeting of the forum, scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday, is crucial since it comes barely a month before the Doha ministerial meeting of the WTO (November 9 to 13), where OECD members are likely to push for inclusion of competition laws and investment rules on the agenda for negotiations.

India, along with several developing countries, has been strongly opposing the inclusion of these two issues on the agenda. The differences between the developed and the developing world on this contentious issue are likely to be highlighted at the conference.

Pushing the case for the developed world at the conference will be heavyweights like the European Union's Competition Commissioner Mario Monti and Charles James, head of the antitrust division of the US Department of Justice.

Developing countries like Egypt, Malaysia and Brazil have been strongly resisting the inclusion of subjects like competition policy in the WTO negotiation as well.

The GFC is one of eight global forums created by the OECD last year. "The forums have been created in order to deepen and extend relations with a larger number of non-OECD economies in fields where our organisation has expertise and global dialogue is important," says the OECD.

It goes on to say that Competition Law and Policy Forum has been the leading forum for regular, focused and off-the-record policy dialogue among the world's leading competition law and policy officials.

The OECD hopes that with the advent of the GFC, its co-operation with non-member states will expand to include in-depth 'OECD-style' dialogue with an increased number of economies in which OECD members have a strong interest.

Indo-Asian News Service

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