India's concerns should be addressed in Doha: Nath

New Delhi, Dec 2: India's concerns must be adequately addressed as and when the Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations are resumed, Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath has said.

Addressing the Inter-Parliamentary Union Conference on ''What Future for the Doha Round? The Benefits of Success, the Costs of Failure'' in Geneva yesterday, the minister emphasised India's commitment to a rule-based multilateral trading system.

''It is vitally important that the resumption of negotiations should be based on a shared understanding of clear principles that should guide the talks,'' he said.

The minister said that the core of the Doha Round is its development content and, therefore, the deliberations should be faithful to the mandate as elaborated by the July Framework and the Hong Kong Declaration.

He said a balanced outcome requires an effort on all fronts and, therefore, disciplines in domestic support, clarification and improvement of disciplines in rules to prevent their abuse, the market-access concerns of developing countries in services, implementation issues are some such matters which need to be resolved with equal priority, besides the special concerns of the poorest members including the Least Developed Countries.

Building confidence in the give-and-take process of the negotiations are also needed, he added.

On India's perspectives on these negotiations, Mr Kamal Nath said, ''The central policy concern for India is its development process which seeks to improve the livelihood and create jobs for the poorest sections of Indian society.'' At the same time, he said that sustainable growth that addresses the development objectives can only take place if the people were globally competitive.

''Our programme of autonomous liberalisation across all sectors has been tailored to this objective. However, integration with the global economy is not an end in itself.

It is essential that this process contribute to our development efforts by creating jobs and reducing poverty.

''Nowhere, is this challenge more daunting than in Indian agriculture, which employs abound two-thirds of our people while contributing just one-fifth of our GDP,'' he said.

In manufacturing, though the country was committed to broad-based liberalisation, the sector must be enabled to create jobs for the unemployed.

''India cannot just be a large market for the manufacturing energies of other countries. We believe we have comparative advantage in several manufacturing sectors and this must be allowed to come into play. The same holds true for Services,'' Mr Nath said adding that it was important for India to ensure that its comparative advantage found full expression in global markets.

UNI

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