India's main business chambers on June 22 supported the country's Trade Minister Kamal Nath's stand on agriculture issues at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks in Germany, saying he had a duty to protect poor farmers in India.
Negotiations in Potsdam between the United States, European Union, India and Brazil - known as the G4 - failed last week after India refused to yield ground on giving market for farm products to developed countries. "Talks have failed as India refused to dilute its stand on agricultural market access," Nath had told PTI news agency.
In a statement, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) said it "appreciated the constructive role and engagement of India" in the talks.
"India's stand in the WTO is consistent with the objective of our country to have an inclusive growth that will take care of the special needs of our agriculture sector which is the most vulnerable sector of our economy," said Amit Mitra, secretary general of FICCI.
The FICCI said agriculture constituted the backbone of the rural livelihood security system in India. The sector provides employment to around 59 per cent of the workforce in the country, employing around 234 million people.
Later, Nath told a presss conference in New Delhi that there was no future for the G4 as a platform to break the impasse in the multilateral trade talks.
"It's the end of the day for G4," Nath said. "Now its for the full membership of the WTO to take the Doha round forward."
The G4 had been established to accelerate the process of consensus-building among developed and developing countries on a global trade treaty. The Doha round of WTO talks, launched in the capital of Qatar in November 2001, was originally due to have been completed in 2004.
The talks have been bogged down by a series of missed deadlines mainly owing to lack of consensus among developing and developed countries on issues of farm subsidies and non-agricultural market access.
-DPA