In the first major agreement in nine years, the deal covers six key issues important to developing countries including food security, balanced outcome fisheries subsidies, pandemic response and patent exemptions on COVID-19 vaccines.
The deal survived a last-minute hiccup on Thursday night, which threatened to derail an outcome on the Fishing and TRIPS waiver.
“Finally, we delivered! A successful WTO MC6 with over 6 concrete deliverables…” WTO Director-General Ngoji Okonjo-Iwela tweeted on Friday following the result of the MC12 as a Geneva package.
The deal, which tested the negotiating skills of Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal, saw several trade-offs between developed and developing countries during two nights of marathon talks, which went on long before the Thursday afternoon deadline.
“There is a good outcome on the long pending issues,” Goyal said, adding that India has fully protected the interests of fishermen and farmers. “Overall, it is a good package. Today there is no issue on which we have to be concerned, whether it is related to agriculture like MSP (Minimum Support Price), public stockholding program to meet the national food security programme. Strengthening relevance or PM Garib Kalyan Yojana, TRIPS waiver, e-commerce moratorium, response to Covid and fisheries,” Goyal said after the deal.
India defended its right to subsidize Indian fishermen, with controversial clauses removed from the text at the last minute. In return, India agreed to an 18-month extension of the moratorium on customs duties on electronic imports, which it argues favors rich countries. However, overfishing, falls short on deep sea fishing; And illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing is addressed through the proposed agreement.
“At India’s insistence, sovereign sites on the EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zone) have been firmly established. It is indeed a great achievement,” Goyal said, adding that the key stakeholders that have benefited from these “historic decisions” taken by the 12th WTO Ministerial Conference include fishermen, farmers, food security, multilateralism, and trade and business, especially are digitally .economy and MSMEs.
The patent waiver and fisheries deal almost failed due to last-minute hurdles and objections by a group of countries. While the UK stalled the patent waiver deal for five hours, awaiting approval from its capital, the US and China took a few more hours to resolve the eligibility condition language under the agreement. The fisheries agreement nearly slipped after African, Caribbean and Pacific states (ACPs) called for a stronger deal to reintroduce removed parts, a ban on subsidies that contribute to overfishing and overpopulation. Put it.
India’s major demand for a permanent solution on public storage of food grains will now be taken up in the next ministerial meeting itself.
Deal on patent exemption on COVID-19 vaccines will allow India and other eligible developing countries to manufacture and export unvaccinated
Permission is required from the original manufacturer and also exports to other needy countries for a period of five years. New Delhi believes that this will help its companies set up more manufacturing plants in several countries.
According to people aware of developments, after talks broke down on Wednesday, India acted as a facilitator and reached out to several countries, including the US and South Africa, to work out the deliverables. Goyal held several bilateral and small group meetings to try to bring all the countries together when the talks appeared to be at a standstill.
Two controversial clauses banning excessive fishing subsidies within seven years have been removed, according to the fisheries text. India was seeking a transition period of 25 years instead of seven years to withdraw such support.
The current deal will only cover the elimination of harmful subsidies to prevent illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing activities.
In the final step, India clearly outlined that it would agree to extend the moratorium on customs duty on digital imports if the “final package of MC12” favors the interest of India and developing countries.
The agreement states that the current moratorium on customs duty on digital imports will continue till December 31, 2023. Until now, the moratorium has been extended every two years since 1998, to prevent countries from imposing any duties on digital or electronic imports or transmissions.
However, this time India has limited the extension to only one and a half years. “Should the Ministerial Conference 13 be delayed beyond 31 March 2024, that date the adjournment will end unless the Minister or the General Council decides to extend,” read the text.
In agriculture, India has agreed to impose no export restrictions on purchases by the United Nations World Food Program on the condition that it will have the flexibility to restrict if domestic food security is required. India’s other demand to allow exports to needy countries from its public stockholdings on a government-to-government basis will be discussed along with other agriculture issues in the next ministerial conference.
The last time the WTO made a major trade decision was in 2013, when it agreed to a trade facilitation agreement.