SME Times News Bureau | 17 Sep, 2021
Minister of Commerce & Industry Piyush Goyal highlighted
that Agreement on Agriculture at the WTO was riddled with deep imbalances,
which favour the developed countries and have tilted the rules against many
developing countries and therefore as a first step in agriculture reform, the
historical asymmetries and imbalances must be corrected in order to ensure a
rule-based, fair and equitable order.
The G-33 Virtual Informal Ministerial Meeting
organized by Indonesia was held on Thursday, to discuss the Agricultural Priority
Issues of G33 and the Way Forward for the Twelfth Ministerial Conference
(MC-12) scheduled to be held from 30th November to 3rd December 2021.
The Informal Ministerial Meeting was chaired by
the Minister of Trade of the Republic of Indonesia, Mr. Muhammad Lutfi.
Director General of WTO, Dr Ngozi Okonjo Iweala
delivered the Keynote Remarks. Out of a total of 47 G-33 Members,
representatives from 21 Member countries, including India, took the floor to make
brief intervention.
India’s official delegation for the meeting was
headed by Goyal.
In his intervention
the Minister emphasized that as part of the trust-building exercise for MC 12,
G-33 must strive for positive outcomes on permanent solution to Public
Stockholding (PSH) for food security purposes which is of utmost importance,
finalization of a Special Safeguard Mechanism (SSM) quickly and a balanced
outcome on Domestic Support.
He
urged the G 33 members to work collectively to retain the cohesion of G 33
coalition and strengthen it further by reaching out to other like-minded
developing groups to secure their support for a fair, balanced and development
-centric outcome on agriculture at MC-12.
The meeting concluded with the adoption of the
G-33 Joint Ministerial Statement reaffirming commitment for expeditious
resolution of the WTO’s mandated issues in agriculture. The meeting also called
for satisfactorily addressing the development issues of developing countries
and LDCs with Special and Differential Treatment as an integral part of international
trade negotiations.