A crucial summit will be held in New Delhi next month to ensure the success of World Trade Organisation's Doha round of negotiations before contentious issues are taken up in the next meeting in Cancun, co-chairman of the Commonwealth Business Council Hugh Morgan has said.
The two-day summit, to be inaugurated by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on March 15, would draw up the agenda for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting scheduled to be held in December this year, Morgan told PTI.
"The Doha round will fail if there is no fundamental change in agricultural protectionism primarily in Europe and a failure will be calamitous," he said.
The "significant" Summit will bring together trade ministers from the Commonwealth, EU, US and leading figures like the Director General of the WTO, Rahul Bajaj, co-chairman of the Commonwealth Business Council and Ashok Soota, president, CII will be at the inaugural session.
The Delhi trade summit will provide an opportunity for developing countries to voice their growing concerns on WTO issues before the Cancun meet.
The importance of Doha Development Agenda for Commonwealth countries, including India, are market access for exports, liberalisation of agriculture and textiles, opening up South-South trade through reduction of developing country barriers and tackling non-tariff barriers.
Another part of the agenda of the trade summit would be to discuss ways and means to strengthen WTO rules to protect poorer countries from the protectionism of more powerful ones - which means keeping regulations on minimum labour and environmental standards out.
The Doha Round is blocked mainly due to EU intransigence on agriculture. Some deadlines have been missed and others are looming.
Among them are the March 31 deadlines on the market access negotiations, crucially on agriculture.
The New Delhi Summit takes place a fortnight before the deadline and, as such, it is a great opportunity for ministers and business representatives to discuss these bones of contention and try to find ways to keep the round on track, Morgan said.
The Summit will make all out efforts to ensure that the failure of Seattle II following a North-South confrontation in 1999 is not repeated.
The Doha agenda was intended to put emphasis on the centrality of development issues in the existing and future agreements.
Market access issues are, however, in danger of being overshadowed by other issues. Many countries are suspicious that Europe, the US and Japan will not deliver genuine market access of their exports.
The key stumbling block is agriculture and without progress on this issue, developing countries will be unwilling to make concessions in other important areas like services, which has the potential to attract much needed investment to the developing countries as well as providing opportunities for business.
© 2026