Murasoli Maran, Union Minister of Commerce & Industry, has urged the World Trade Organisation (WTO) member countries to favourably consider the concerns of developing countries especially with regard to the Anti-Dumping and Subsidies Agreements. "Only then can a level playing field be created in the arena of international trade - else, it will remain a power dominated multilateral trading system", the Minister said.

Inaugurating a two-day National Seminar on Anti-Dumping and Subsidy Issues here today, he said the urgent need at this juncture was to identify India's core interest on issues relating to Anti-Dumping and Subsidy Agreements. "The National Seminar was part of this process of broad-based internal consultations which would enable the country to define its position with clarity, in keeping with the overall national interest," he said.

The seminar is being organised by the Department of Commerce, Ministry of Commerce and Industry.

With little over a year left before the next Ministerial Conference of the WTO, Maran indicated that India's main implementation concerns were relating to countervailing duty investigation procedures and operationalising the Special & Differential Treatment provisions under the Anti-Dumping Agreement. For the developing countries these are the two issues, which are to be deliberated upon and decided in a time-bound manner, he said.

In respect of countervailing duty investigations, India had submitted a detailed proposal, answered nearly 50 questions and was hopeful of a satisfactory resolution of the concerned issues by the mandated date of 31st July, 2002, Maran said, but added that "Much to our consternation, the developed countries have not shown any degree of reasonableness on this proposal and we may be forced to take up these concerns directly to the Negotiating Group on Rules of the WTO".

He said that a detailed submission had also been made for operationalising the Special & Differential Treatment provision in the Anti-Dumping Agreement and the WTO Anti-Dumping Committee was expected to finalise its recommendation on this by the year-end.

Maran also referred to the concerns raised by many countries on the increasing resort to anti-dumping measures especially by non-traditional users including India, Argentina, South Africa, Mexico etc, with some even going to the extent of questioning the need for Anti Dumping as the trade remedy instrument and said: "Let me emphatically state that we share the wide spread concern against the misuse of Anti-Dumping Agreement for protectionist purposes. A distinction however needs to be made between the genuine use of Anti-Dumping Agreement for protecting the domestic industry from injurious dumping and misuse of the Agreement for unjustified protection even when the evidence of dumping and causal injury to the domestic industry is at best tenuous. The findings of various WTO panels and the Appellate Body in disputes involving anti-dumping issues, points towards misuse of the Agreement by the traditional users of Anti-Dumping measures. No questions are being raised by learned academics on this aspect of Anti-Dumping."

L.V. Saptharishi, Additional Secretary & Director General of Anti-Dumping (DGAD), in his address, said that though India was one of the largest user of the anti-dumping instrument, none of India's decisions had ever been quashed by the Supreme Court of India and no grievances regarding India's decisions had been taken to the WTO forum either, underlining the transparency and fairness of the proceedings. "We are looking at these issues not from a protectionist approach but from the approach of removing trade distortions in the ongoing globalisation process", he said.

S.N. Menon, Additional Secretary, Ministry of commerce & Industry highlighted the fact that the ongoing negotiations consisted of two phases, one wherein countries would identify the issues and in the second phase, the negotiations would take place on these issues.

The seminar has been organised in the context of the ongoing WTO negotiations on Anti-Dumping and Subsidies Agreements. These negotiations are currently being undertaken in the WTO Negotiating Group on Rules (NG Rules). Four meeting of the Negotiating Group are being held in the year 2002. While two meeting have already been held on May 6-8, 2002 and July, 8-10, 2002, the remaining two meeting of WTO NG Rules are scheduled to be held on 16-18 October 2002 and 25-27 November 2002. The negotiations on WTO Rules afford an opportunity to address issues arising out of anti-dumping and countervailing duty action against the country's exports by seeking possible amendments in some of the provisions of the two Agreements. At the same time, it would need to be ensured that the flexibility available to protect the domestic industry from injurious dumping is not curtailed.