A high level delegation consisting of Arun Jaitley, Union Minister for Commerce & Industry and Law & Justice and Ajit Singh, Minister for Agriculture, will be attending the mini ministerial meeting on World Trade Organisation (WTO) issues scheduled to be held in Tokyo from February 14 to 16, 2003. Other members of the delegation are Dipak Chatterjee, Commerce Secretary, S.N. Menon, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Commerce & Industry; and K. M. Chandrasekhar, Ambassador & Permanent Representative of India to the WTO/Geneva.
The meeting, being hosted by the Government of Japan, is intended to facilitate an informal exchange of views among key WTO member countries, representing both the developed and the developing world, on major issues in the ongoing multilateral trade negotiations. Earlier, a similar gathering of leading member countries had taken place at the Sydney mini ministerial in November 2002.
About 24 countries are expected to participate in the meeting – Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Costa Rica, European Commission, Egypt, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Korea, Lesotho, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria, Senegal, Singapore, South Africa, Switzerland, Trinidad & Tobago and USA.
The focus of negotiations at the Tokyo mini ministerial is expected to be on Agriculture and TRIPs (Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights) and Public Health.
The agenda of the meeting will include Market Access-related issues covering Agriculture as well as Non-Agricultural Products and Services; Singapore Issues – i.e., issues that had emanated from the first Ministerial Conference of the WTO held at Singapore in 1996 namely, Investment, Competition, Trade Facilitation, and Transparency in Government Procurement; Development-related issues; Rules and other issues, besides general discussions on Road to Cancun.
Discussions at Tokyo -- as in the case of Sydney mini ministerial earlier – will thus be on various issues covered under the Work Programme which was agreed by Ministers at the Doha Ministerial Conference of the WTO in November 2001. The objective of the mini ministerial is essentially to see how further progress can be made in taking forward the Doha Work Programme by the time of the next Ministerial Conference of the WTO which is to be held in Cancun (Mexico) in September 2003.