Happy ending for India as WTO conference wraps up with global deals? Find out

While India had pushed for more comprehensive measures in these areas, as well as for talks on agriculture, the final outcome has been backed by New Delhi as promising.

Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal today said that India has achieved spectacular success at WTO's 12th ministerial conference (MC12) in Geneva, Switzerland. "India is 100% satisfied with the outcome of WTO's MC12 conference. India was successful in ensuring the livelihood of its farmers and fishermen," Goyal said. He added that the nation was successful in convincing all countries to ensure a patent waiver for the manufacturing of Covid vaccines.

Here's a look at India's wins and misses at the WTO along with some backdrop.

The long road to partial waiver of IP rights for COVID-19 vaccines

Back in October 2020, India and South Africa had proposed talks on a temporary waiver of intellectual property rights for vaccine manufacturers.

While India had the unofficial backing of more than 120 countries, major global powers continued to stall talks, citing grave discomfort at a “potential blanket suspension of the terms of the TRIPS agreement”.

Ongoing talks at the WTO over the issue had stalled yet again earlier this year, despite a recent push by India to begin virtual interactions among member- states.

Public stockholdings

Goyal today said that there is no negative outcome for India's agriculture sector. India's public stockholding programme for foodgrain will also continue unhindered, he added. On the issue of food security, he said talks have progressed to a certain degree.

A proposed global declaration to not curb foodgrain exports to the World Food Programme (WFP), which seeks to fight hunger in places hit by conflicts, disasters, and climate change, passed in a modified form after being blocked by India.

India and other developing nations run major public stockholding programmes to purchase, stockpile and distribute foodgrains to people in need. Richer economies say some stockholding programmes are considered to distort trade when they involve purchases from farmers at prices fixed by the governments, such as India’s minimum support price programme.

E-commerce taxation

The WTO has also decided to extend yet again the moratorium on taxation on e-commerce transactions.

The WTO members had agreed not to impose customs duties on electronic transmissions since 1998 and the moratorium has been periodically extended at successive ministerial conferences. However, India has increasingly become a strict opponent of the move and initially blocked the continuation of the moratorium at MC12.

New Delhi had stressed that it is willing to tax electronic transactions in the near future. It also wants to retain the policy space to grant preferential treatment of digital products created within India.

"The moratorium was extended but with a deadline. It was decided that there has to be clarity on this issue by March 2024," Goyal said today. The next ministerial conference is set to be held then.

While the profits and revenues of digital players are rising steadily, the ability of governments to check these imports and generate additional tariff revenues is being ‘severely’ limited because of the moratorium, India has said. The potential tariff revenue loss to developing countries is estimated at $10 billion annually.

Fishing subsidies

"India was successful in ensuring the livelihood of its farmers and fishermen," Goyal said today.

The WTO conference saw an accord to curb fishing subsidies. The fishing subsidies deal has the potential to reverse collapsing fish stocks. Though pared back significantly, it still drew approval.

"The agreement on fisheries is currently limited to illegal, unreported, unregulated fishing. The discussion on extending this to all government subsidies will take place going forward. Currently, there are no restrictions on government subsidies," Goyal said.

Instead, the WTO has cognisance of India's demand that nations that have consistently supported illegal deepsea fishing be regulated, he added.

The WTO fish deal has enormous impact on fishermen and marine exports given the fact that fish constitute food for poorer nations.

According to the latest data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), fish stocks are at risk of collapsing in many parts of the world due to overexploitation. It is estimated that 34 percent of the global stocks are overfished, compared to 10 percent in 1974. In other words, they are being exploited at a pace where the fish population cannot replenish itself.

Declining fish stocks threaten to worsen poverty and endanger coastal communities that rely on fishing. Roughly 39 million people depend on captured fisheries for their livelihood, according to the WTO. Healthy seas are also important for food security, with fish providing 20 percent of animal protein needs, on an average for 3.3 billion people.

The WTO admits that, in theory, fishing should be checked by its very environment: low-fish stocks should mean more time consumed in the process of fishing and increased costs. The problem, however, is that very often state funding keeps an unprofitable fishing fleet at sea. Global fisheries subsidies are estimated to range from $14 billion to $54 billion per year.