WTO proposal requires more cuts in farm subsidy: Ficci

New Delhi, July 19 (UNI) The compromise proposals on agriculture, trade and industrial market access would require higher cuts for effective reduction in the overall trade distorting support (OTDS) in developed countries, industry chamber Ficci said today.

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) on Tuesday put forward a new compromise framework as a latest attempt to save the long-stalled Doha Round free trade talks.

According to the proposals, the US must substantially cut its trade-distorting farm subsidies by 66 per cent to 73 per cent to a level between 13 billion dollars and 16.4 billion dollars.

In order to be consistent with the Doha mandate, the OTDS for one of the developed country members has to be reduced to the level of 12 billion dollars, Ficci said.

''While the present draft is an improvement ... it needs to be more ambitious for reduction of trade-distorting farm subsidies in developed countries,'' Amit Mitra, Secretary-General of FICCI said.

It said that on issues of primary interest to developing countries like special products (SP), special safeguard mechanism (SSM) and tariff escalations progress remains inadequate.

UNI