Making a strong pitch for development, Mr. Kamal Nath, Minister of Commerce and Industry, has said that the Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations should not perpetuate the inequalities of global trade.

In his address at the Plenary Session of the 6th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Hong Kong, he said, The ambition of developed countries cannot and must not trample on the aspirations of four-fifths of humanity. In the name of completion, if the content of this round only perpetuates the inequities of global trade, then it will be no round. To redeem the pledge we made at Doha, let us resolve to make this a round for those who need it. Let us make this a round that truly reflects the development dimension in its most beneficial and most effective sense”.

He said that the Doha mandate was to correct the development deficit” left by the Uruguay Round and pointed out that negotiations in Hong Kong will have failed if they do not contribute towards creating a rule-based, world order, which not only makes trade free, but also make trade fair.

On industrial tariffs or non-agricultural market access (NAMA), Mr. Nath reiterated that market access was not about tariffs alone, as non-tariff barriers such as abuse of both anti-dumping and technical standards hindered market access for developing countries. If we are to pursue the so-called ‘real’ market access in the NAMA negotiations, the boot is surely on the other foot…. It is no use having zero duty levels of aeroplanes, while maintaining a 30% duty on leather handbags!” he said while flagging trade barriers by India’s traditional industries as textiles, clothing, leather products, footwear and a range of other medium technology products, involving livelihood of hundreds of millions of industrial workers of small and medium enterprises in developing countries.