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Government assures farm sector of QR safeguards

The government on Saturday assured the farm sector of effective safeguards to counter the challenges emanating from dismantling of Quantitative Restrictions (QR) from April under WTO (World Trade Organisation) and asserted it would protect farmers' interests in case of sudden upsurge in imports.

Seeking to dispel fears of cheap imports and dumping, Agriculture Minister Nitish Kumar said, "India has considerable flexibility to impose higher level of tariffs within the bound level on import of farm produce to deal with possible adverse impact of removal of QRs."

Inaugurating a conference on Impact of WTO on Indian Agriculture and Marketing Cooperatives, he said the government has recently hiked import duties on several agricultural items including wheat, rice, sugar and edible oils.

Pointing out edible oil as the only item that may worry farmers and the government under WTO, he said bound rate on its import has been fixed at 300 per cent.

Referring to mandated negotiations on Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) under WTO, Kumar said Indian proposals included appropriate level of tariff bindings to be maintained by developing countries as a special measure.

Minister of State for Commerce Omar Abdullah said India had the right to increase its applied rates of tariffs to appropriate levels wherever tariff rates were either unbound or bound rates were higher than applied rates.

Minister of State for Agriculture Shripad Y Naik also addressed the meet, organised by National Cooperative Union of India (NCUI) and National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd (NAFED).

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