WTO 13th Ministerial Conference: All You Need To Know

India will take part in the 13th Ministerial Conference to be held in the Middle Eastern city of Abu Dhabi—more commonly referred to as 'MC13'—along with 164 other member nations of the World Trade Organisation.

At the meeting slated for Feb. 26–29 at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre, the ministerial members will review the functioning of the multilateral trading system and its future course.

Deliberations are expected to include areas such as agriculture, trade and sustainable development, fisheries subsidies, e-commerce moratoriums, investment facilitation, IP/TRIPS or Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, and the currently defunct appellate body.

The meeting will also serve as a juncture for India to discuss emerging trade concerns. Speaking at the Raisina Dialogue in New Delhi on Friday, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal stressed the importance of the WTO and the need to make the organisation stronger with the necessary reforms.

India is concerned by the tax imposition of the European Union, he said, referring to the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, and will take up the issue within the rules of the WTO and try to address the issue bilaterally with the EU as well.

Here's all you need to know about where India stands on key WTO MC13 agenda topics and what the discussions mean for India:

India's Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana, a flagship free food grain scheme, involves the procurement and distribution of food grains to poorer households. Under the scheme, the government provides 5 kilogrammes of free foodgrains per month to an estimated 80 crore beneficiaries.

This has been flagged at the WTO, where public procurement and storage at subsidised rates are seen as a distortion of global agricultural trade.

The public stockholding of food grains is the longest pending issue at the WTO and dates back to 2002, according to an official with knowledge of the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity.

In the 9th ministerial meeting held in Bali in 2009, a 'peace clause' emerged as an interim solution until a permanent solution could be achieved.

The 'peace clause' shielded existing programmes of developing countries against legal challenges if their support was in excess of agreed limits—set within 10% of the value of production for developing countries.

Meanwhile, India has held that its support measures are necessary to meet domestic food security and cater to its poor population, particularly in the years 2020–21, when the PMGKAY scheme was launched.

Ahead of the Abu Dhabi Meet, India has held that its 'first ask' would be to seek a permanent solution to the discussions on public stock holding limits, referring to the clause.

Without that, India will not take part in any discussion on any other issue in agriculture unless the mandated issue is settled, and this is the first ask, the official quoted above said.

The WTO adopted an agreement on fisheries subsidies at the 12th Ministerial Conference on June 17, 2022. However, for the agreement to become operational, two-thirds of the members have to endorse it within four years.

The agreement looks at prohibiting harmful fisheries subsidies, which, according to the WTO website, are a key factor in the widespread depletion of the world's fish stock.

India is pitching a carve-out for its poor fishermen as part of the ongoing negotiations, NDTV Profit had previously reported.

India has also expressed its reservations against a list-based subsidy approach and has called for a 25-year moratorium for distant fishing nations, which have historically exploited ocean resources.

Distant water fishing would include any country fishing beyond its immediate regional fisheries management organisations.

In April 2023—in three cases initiated by the European Union, Japan and Taiwan back in 2019—the WTO dispute settlement body ruled against India's import duties on certain information technology products, citing them as inconsistent with global trade norms.

India resorted to appealing the matter, which now remains in a legal void as the WTO appellate body—the highest body in charge of dispute settlement—is currently defunct.

The heart of the matter is an information technology agreement, originally concluded by 29 participants at a Singapore Ministerial Conference in December 1996.

According to the WTO website, since then, the number of participants has grown to 82, representing about 97% of world trade in IT products. The agreement calls for zero duty on a host of IT products. It was later expanded to cover an additional 201 products in 2015.

NDTV Profit previously reported that India noted that certain items like smartphones and updated electric wireless network technology were not in existence when India signed the ITA in 1997.

Ahead of the MC13 meeting, an official said that India was not in favour of extending the zero duty moratorium, as reported by PTI. There is a need to look at the subject from a development perspective and not from the eyes of big tech companies, the official was quoted as saying.

While India and South Africa have sought to revisit the issue and the adverse impact of the moratorium on developing countries, the U.S., Japan and Australia are said to be pushing for it.

New Delhi is keen on the restoration of a transparent and fully functioning appellate body. The topic gains significance as an extension to India's ongoing appeals to the appellate body regarding technology tariffs.

The matter has been identified as an issue of top priority in terms of WTO reforms—one of the areas of discussion at MC13, according to WTO briefing notes ahead of MC13 on its website.

"The issue took on greater urgency after members were unable to reach consensus on the appointment of new Appellate Body members due to objections from the United States. This blockage eventually led to the Appellate Body no longer being able to function starting on Dec. 11, 2019," it said.

At the last meeting (MC12), ministers agreed to the aim of having a fully and well-functioning dispute settlement system accessible to all members by 2024.