Statement by Shri Piyush Goyal at the WTO 12th Ministerial Conference during the Thematic Session on Agriculture

Following is the text of the Statement made by Union Minister of Commerce & Industry, Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution and Textiles, Shri Piyush Goyal at the 12^th Ministerial Conference of the WTO in Geneva during the Thematic Session on Agriculture today:

“We are discussing one of the most critical issues under negotiations which has a direct impact on the lives of millions of people across the globe.

Agriculture is not just a source of livelihood for most of the farmers and farm workers in developing countries, it is also important for their food security, their nutrition and in a sense for developing nations and the people at large.

Many countries have been severely impacted due to the recent food crisis, both during COVID 19 and the current geopolitical situation. My friends from Egypt and Sri Lanka spoke about this yesterday, and we need to see if the draft declarations and decisions under consideration would help in improving food availability in their countries.

In fact, these two Members have not agreed on the draft Food Security Declaration, but they have called for an immediate Permanent solution to the Public Stockholding issue.

We are in a situation, where the temporary declarations are not going to help the countries rather the Permanent Solution to Public Stock Holding, pending for more than 9 years, is not yet being taken up for closure.

India has had an experience of transiting from a food deficient nation to a largely self-sufficient food nation. Our state support in the form of subsidies and other government interventions played a very important role to achieve this sufficiency, therefore we are fighting on behalf of all the developing countries including the LDCs collectively based on our own journey, our own experience. And look at the story so far, right from the Uruguay round where after 8 years of negotiations between 1985-86 and 1994 when the Marrakesh agreement was decided led to the establishment of WTO, agriculture always got a raw deal, imbalanced outcomes and those who were distorting markets by granting huge subsidies managed to secure their subsidies, which were prevalent at that point of time and deprived the other nations, the developing nations from their ability to grow and take prosperity to their people.

What we are discussing are the rules of an agreement largely suited to the developed countries, which work for their socio-economic situation already give higher entitlement for the developed world and the calculations under which the developed world is questioned are flawed based on certain situations prevailing 35 years ago and without any relevance to today's situation in either terms of growth in prices, inflation, changing dynamics with absolutely no system of calibrating it over the years, we landed up freezing that at the 86 levels and today we are suffering the consequences of that.

In my earlier intervention today, I alluded to this only to warn our other friends in the room that the same is sought to be done in Fisheries again. The ministerial conference of 11 December 2013 decided, and I repeat ‘decided’ that the members had agreed to put in place an interim mechanism to negotiate on an agreement for a permanent solution for adoption by the 11th ministerial conference. The process had been fixed. We all agreed on this, and in lieu of agreement on trade facilitation with the developed world was very keen adopt. We compromised, agreed on their trade facilitation agreement and settled for a permanent solution for public stockholding.

In fact, para 8 says and I quote, “Members agreed to establish a work program to be undertaken in the committee on agriculture to pursue this issue with the aim of making recommendations for a permanent solution”. Para 9 says, “Members commit to the work program with the aim of concluding it no later than the 11th Ministerial Conference”. And Para 10 says “The general council shall report to the 10th ministerial conference, the progress made on the work program”. I am reminding you of this because what we are suggested is that we once again start the discussions on this issue, which was reiterated in 28th November 2014 document of the General Council and which states that public stockholding for food security purposes for the developing countries will be final. In fact, even in 2015 the ministerial conference in the 10^th session took note of the progress and decided that they reaffirm the General council decision of 2014 and agreed to engage constructively to make all concerted efforts to agree and adopt the decision.

I am saying this out of agony because we are already in the 12^th MC. It’s a delayed MC, it is almost time for the 13^th MC technically now and we are yet to finalise the permanent solution. I think it is possible to do it. We have very well established and proven mechanisms available and documents are on the table which can be adopted and finalised. So that we can bring closure on this very important subject.

WTO is an organisation for trade, but one should remember that before trade, there comes hunger and one cannot tread the path of trade on an empty stomach.

Leading up to the MC 12, more than 80 countries have come together for taking the issue of Public Stockholding to a logical conclusion and directly addressing the food insecurity concerns.

It is ironical that the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) provides considerable flexibility to the developed members to provide huge subsidies in the form of Aggregate Measure of Support (AMS) and further, to concentrate these subsidies on a few products, without limit, but the same flexibilities are not available to majority of the developing countries including LDCs.

The fear mongering in the name of trade distortion by the latter’s de minimis support entitlements is pointless.

There are vast differences in the actual per farmer domestic support being provided by different countries, as per the information notified to the WTO. This difference in case of some developed countries vis-a-vis the developing countries is more than 200 times. So the developed countries are giving more than 200 times the support that most developing countries are able to give.

Despite this, some Members have been pushing to deprive the low income and resource poor farmers of their already small share in state support.

The special and differential treatment accorded to developing countries remains crucial for us and hence bringing it into the ambit of negotiations is just not acceptable.

We feel that the draft Ministerial Decisions on Agriculture is expansive and goes beyond the Doha Round mandate and does not acknowledge the progress achieved so far.

Finally, India has always been proactive in extending food aid to vulnerable countries. On the proposal for providing exemption to the World Food Programme from export restrictions, while we support such exemptions, we believe, we must also provide for G2G transactions so that we can truly ensure food security - both global and domestic, from a broader perspective, specially considering the fact that World Food Programme has its own limitations of size, scale & funding.

I would urge the membership of the WTO to seriously reflect on this programme of permanent solution to public stockholding being finalised at the MC 12, sending a message to the world that we do care, we care for the poor, we care for the vulnerable, we care for food security, we care for a far more balanced & equitable future for the rest of the world.”