New Delhi: India has received support of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Russia on its tough stand in the WTO over food security related issues during deliberations of Asia-Europe Meeting in Italy.
However, developed countries like UK, Germany, Finland, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden and the European Commission expressed concerns over non-implementation of the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA).
India managed to garner "the support of countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh and Russia for India's standpoint," in Asia Europe Meeting (ASEM) held yesterday, an official statement said today.
Finance Secretary Arvind Mayaram effectively put forth India's point of view on different issues in this forum and was successful in getting India's perspective included in the communique, it said.
India refused to ratify TFA in Geneva meet in late July till the WTO members found a permanent solution to the issue public stock holding of foodgrains for the food security programme.
India has asked WTO to amend the norms for calculating agriculture subsidies so that the country could continue to procure foodgrains from farmers at minimum support price and sell them to poor at cheaper rates without violating the norms.
The current WTO norms limit the value of food subsidies at 10 percent of the total value of food grain production. However, the quantum of subsidy is computed after taking into consideration prices that prevailed two decades ago.
After protracted negotiations, ASEM agreed on not only droping a reference to non-implementation of TFA but also on including a reference to the need for implementation of all Bali decisions in the draft communique of Finance Ministers meeting of ASEM.
Likewise, India got inclusion of reference to BRICS and disappointment with poor progress on IMF quota reforms in the communique. During the deliberations, various contentious issues came up.
The ASEM communique talks about enhanced cooperation between countries of Asia and Europe to create sustainable and profitable growth.
