'As long as people are willing to compromise on quality for a lower price, the unorganised retail sector will stay.'
He conveyed India's position to visiting Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organization Jose Graziano da Silva whom he urged to take the lead in protecting the interests of the poor and farmers at the World Trade Organisation.
Some of these nations are India's biggest export market. India is also dependent on these countries to meet its energy needs.
It have also called for enhanced monitoring of all protectionist measures and high-level political awareness of the associated macroeconomic risks.
Trade ministers from 162 WTO countries will gather in Kenya's capital from Dec. 15-18 to work on an agreement to liberalise global trade.
He asked to focus on the 'vocal for local' mantra during the 'Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav' celebrations.
Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma, who took the initiative of hosting the informal meeting of important countries and blocs like the US, European Union, Brazil, China and Australia, remained busy today with officials. While it is being seen as a bold step by India to re-energise the Doha talks after they collapsed at Geneva in July 2008, New Delhi is consciously keeping the pitch low so as not to raise expectations from the meeting on Thursday and Friday.
Commerce secretary Sunil Barthwal is set to attend a two-day meeting from October 23 at the World Trade Organization (WTO) headquarters in Geneva, that would focus on finding solutions and giving the 'necessary political push' for at least some crucial global trade issues. Next week's meeting comes ahead of the WTO's 13th ministerial conference (MC13), scheduled in Abu Dhabi in February 2024. It will see participation of senior government officials from all WTO member nations.
Gloom over ministerial, courtesy US-China spar, conflict between cotton-producing African nations.
The United States is creating a new strategic framework for the 21st century and its Trans-Pacific Partnership is just one of the pillars of the new edifice, says Sanjaya Baru.
India topped the table of the countries resorting to anti-dumping investigations between July and December 2008, while Brazil, China and Argentina were other major users of the WTO-compliant trade remedy to protect their domestic industries against cheap imports.
Country's apex business chambers -- CII, Ficci and Assocham -- have said the WTO draft on Non-Agriculture Market Access under the Doha Round of trade talks was in complete disregard to the mandate of the round, which had to revolve around lesser obligation on the developing countries for duty reduction.
The delegation was to meet with business and government leaders both in New Delhi and Mumbai, coinciding with the Innovative Technologies for manufacturing Expo 2009, an international B2B exhibition and conference, India's largest trade show focusing in agro& food processing, auto components and chemicals and fertilizers as well as electronics and electrical engineering.
Narendra Modi's strategy in Gujarat was to run the state as a business entity.
Despite the noise that India is making at the WTO saying that its food security concerns are non-negotiable, back home it is aggressively pushing for dismantling minimum support prices and at the same time limiting the sovereign role of Food Corporation of India in food distribution to the hungry and the needy, says Devinder Sharma.
Chinese experts called for consultations between India and China to sort out differences on reported moves in India to stop importing Chinese telecom equipment apparently over fears of inherent security risks.
World Trade Organisation director-general Pascal Lamy now maintains that it is rather early to set the dates for a ministerial meeting to finalise the modalities for cutting agricultural subsidies and import as well as industrial tariffs, trade envoys said.
At the 9th review of the US trade policy regime, many members -- China, Norway, Thailand, the European Union, among others -- sharply criticised Washington for not adopting WTO-consistent policies in several areas.
Fernando de Mateo, the chairman of the WTO Council for Trade in Services, released the report on services on Monday. The report asks member countries to commit to providing market access in sectors where many trade barriers exist. Draft texts on agriculture and non-agriculture market access have already been released.
The developing world including India had opposed the Doha Agriculture text as the developed countries had not matched the major concessions announced by the developing nations in the earlier rounds of WTO negotiations. In the Doha round, it was accepted that developed nations would need to make some contribution by reducing agricultural subsidies and providing greater market access.
In the second major decision to end the UPA government's legacy, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday scrapped four cabinet committees, including one on Unique Identification Authority, as part of his efforts to minimise decision-making processes.
The WTO Appellate Body on Monday held that China was obstructing trade by forcing foreign suppliers to distribute certain copyright-intensive products through state-owned companies which is inconsistent with the Beijings obligations with the WTO.
India has not changed its position on agriculture and industry at the World Trade Organisation negotiations on freeing global trade to protect the interests of its farmers and small enterprises, Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma has said.
No other country can match the uncanny knack of the United States in pushing its agenda for trade negotiations. Recent inclusion of issues like remanufacturing into current WTO negotiations is a case in point.
Rejecting the suggestion that India is taking a difficult stand in the World Trade Organisation talks, Commerce Minister Kamal Nath has said New Delhi only wants a multilateral trading system that corrects the existing structural flaws.
From the seas to the stars, this partnership will now be deepened by the defining role of technology, the statement said.
Meeting will confine discussion to processes involved in building consensus among members.
The secretariat of the Geneva-based global trade body planned to increase Lamy's annual pay by 20 to 30 per cent from around 500,000 Swiss francs ($468,000) at present and proposed the raise at an informal committee meeting in early July to discuss budgetary and other issues, Kyodo news agency quoted trade sources as saying.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will begin his two-day visit to the United States on Wednesday with a tour of Silicon Valley, as Moscow seeks to build a similar centre for an innovative modernisation of its economy.
Check out the new schedule for the CA exams held by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India.
In a significant move to make the World Trade Organisations trade negotiations to meet the July-end deadline for a Framework Agreement, Trade Ministers of Non-Group 5 including India are meeting in Paris from July10-11.
To the chorus of the usual suspect television news brigade in New Delhi, Pakistan seems to have launched a 'Peace Offensive' of sorts vis a vis India. After a delay of 15 years it now wants to reciprocate by granting the Most Favoured Nation status to India for trade. For the uninitiated, MFN is an obligation under the World Trade Organisation regime.
There 'appears to be a conscious policy to create unfair preferences for Chinese industries by making raw materials cheaper for China's companies to get, and goods more economical for them to produce, US Trade Representative Ron Kirk said on Tuesday. The European Union has filed a similar complaint with the WTO.
India plans to cut transaction costs for exporters and ensure the availability of dollar finance, as it looks to reverse a decline in exports and double outbound sales of goods and services over the next five years.
While the Trump administration wants India to lower the trade barriers and embrace "fair and reciprocal" trade, India has raised tariffs on 28 items exported from the US in retaliation to America's withdrawal of preferential access for Indian products.
India will be represented by Union Divestment Minister Arun Shourie in the informal World Trade Organisation ministerial meeting convened by US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick
