The new texts on agricultural negotiations and NAMA negotiations do not add much to the previous drafts released two months ago. Many brackets are still to be negotiated in agricultural negotiations. There is a meet of the WTO members by this month-end and even though the revised text is said to be a blueprint for the final agreement, developing countries should not accede to a deal unless all development issues are comprehensively addressed.
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A lot was expected of the negotiations at the IGWG on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property. But, those who saw an opportunity to make a difference in a starkly iniquitous situation, where medicines required the most for the world's poorest and vulnerable populations are rarely researched or made accessible and affordable, were awestruck, as the conclusion won't make any dent in the present scenario.
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On account of speculative trading and impact of prices of essential commodities, futures trading in wheat, rice and pulses has been suspended by the Forward Markets Commission as it caused market manipulation, leading to a rise in prices. But, a future trading is still being carried out in a number of agricultural commodities, says Krishan Bir Chaudhary.
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The global agricultural market has been witnessing structural change for the past two years wherein international prices of agricultural commodities have been seeing an upward trend. These changes are primarily driven by a combination of demand and supply factors.
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The report focuses on a number of steps that need to be taken to give a much-needed boost to the export sector to maintain the growth of the Indian economy. It also says that the adverse impact of exchange rate instability is high on the export sector.
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A noted environmental activist from South Asia and a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change representing Bangladesh, Dr Atiq Rahman and his senior colleague Mr Khandaker Mainuddin share with Centad the inputs from the COP 13, Bali, December 2007.
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The report highlights the problems that agro-export items have been facing in the 27-member block EU for the past decade. It concentrates on the issues like food, and health safety requirements, which have become the hurdle in the EU-India FTA negotiations.
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The report critically examines the provisions -- constructed normal value, zeroing, causation, de minimis dumping margin and the lesser duty rule -- of the anti-dumping agreement which act as barriers to international trade.
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Though the Agriculture text tries to tackle all the development issues in developing countries, but questions like how the Doha Round will face different challenges, still remain unanswered, says Linu Mathew Philip
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NAMA negotiations text not only ignores concerns of developing countries, it also fails to take care of mandatory provisions of Article 16 listed in the Doha Ministerial Declaration, argues Kasturi Das
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The report concentrates on the export performance of Indian machine tools during the period of liberalisation. It also attempts to analyse the export competitiveness of machine tools during the period.
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What lay behind the Madras High Court ruling against Swiss pharmaceuticals giant Novartis’ challenge of the Indian Patents Act? A detailed analysis of the celebrated case and its implications for access to affordable medicines.
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An answer to Novartis’ claim that the judgment of the Madras High Court in the Indian patents case will discourage investments in innovation that would have resulted in better medicines.
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Professor Prabhu Pingali, Director, Agricultural Economics Division, Food and Agriculture Organisation, Rome, explains how small farmers can benefit from the commercialisation of agriculture.
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Agribusiness and development expert Alexandra Spieldoch explains how big agribusinesses corporations work against the interests of farmers.
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The Draft Modalities Text put forward by the chair of the WTO’s Non-agricultural Market Access (NAMA) negotiations, on July 17, 2007 fails to take into account the concerns and views of most of the developing countries.
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Poor market support, rising production costs and incoherent government policies have pushed Indian cotton farmers into deep crisis.
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Dr Saman Kelegama, Executive Director, Institute of Policy Studies, Sri Lanka, explains how South Asian countries can benefit from trade in services.
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Professor Yash Tandon, Executive Director of South Centre, Geneva, on the implications of GATS negotiations for developing countries.
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Organic farming, mainly for the export market, has made significant progress in many parts of India. However, this form of agriculture faces a number of obstacles. Institutional support by the government is essential to overcome the hurdles and promote faster growth in this sector, argues Kasturi Das.
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Hardly any developing country, including India, has made full use of stipulations related to compulsory licensing. To remedy this situation, the author suggests and discusses necessary amendments in the Indian Patents Act.
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The government has not thought out all the implications of the Special Economic Zones it wants to promote all over the country.
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In an interview with Centad, Miguel Rodriguez Mendoza, Senior Fellow, International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD) emphasised that country ownership is very strongly underlined in the aid-for-trade initiative, in the identification of needs and development priorities.
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Former lead economist and chief, Trade Policy Research Group, World Bank, J Michael Finger discusses the aid-for-trade provision in an interview with Centad.
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The August 2004 Framework on NAMA, supplemented by the Hong Kong Declaration, is heavily tilted against developing countries. The new system that is being created will reduce development flexibilities in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and accelerate de-industrialisation, argues Martin Khor.
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Talks on several issues related to Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) that have to be sorted out in the Doha Work Programme have not made much headway.
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From a development perspective, negotiations on agriculture before the suspension of talks in the Doha Work Programm (DWP) were lacking both in process and in substance. Hence, the suspension of negotiations should lead to a review, rethinking and revision of the frameworks of the DWP, instead of a resumption of talks along the same lines, argues Martin Khor.
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The Mashelkar Committee report has not fulfilled its mandate of determining whether the granting of patents for pharmaceutical substances under TRIPS should be limited to new chemical entities or to new medical entities involving one or more inventive steps.
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Special and Differential Treatment (S&DT), an important area for developed and least developed countries in the WTO negotiations, needs to be made more responsive to the needs of these countries, argues Chandrakant Patel of the Southern and Eastern African Trade Information and Negotiations Institute (SEATINI), Switzerland.
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Eminent legal scholar Professor B S Chimni discusses ways in which the dispute settlement system of the WTO can be more responsive to the needs of developing countries.
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Professor John H Jackson compares the WTO dispute settlement body with other multilateral juridical bodies and finds it holds up well.
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The authors examine three questions that dominate the postmortem of the failure of the recent WTO talks: What caused the failure? Does it mean the end of the Doha Development Agenda? Will bilateralism and regionalism become even more dominant?
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Regional and bilateral trade agreements need to be scrutinised more closely, says Jo Leadbeater, head of advocacy at Oxfam GB.
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Economist Jayati Ghosh talks to Centad about the proliferation of Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs).
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With patent protection in place in India, MNCs, big pharma companies and agro-chemical majors in the country are unjustified in demanding exclusive rights over clinical and field trial data, argues K M Gopakumar
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Developing countries including India have proposed an amendment to the TRIPS Agreement, to make additional disclosure obligations mandatory when patent applications relate to use of biological resources or related traditional knowledge.
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Renewed pressures applied on developing countries for further dilution of protective safeguards in agriculture does not augur well for poor and marginal farmers in countries like India, argues Linu Mathew Philip.
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Sensitive products are a tool of protection, whereas the special products are a tool of development, points out Samar Verma.
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If NAMA negotiations are now going in a direction detrimental to developing countries, a good part of the blame lies in the easy give-ins and compromises.
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The suicide of cotton farmers in India’s cotton-growing districts has set off alarm bells in the sector. A national workshop organised by the Hyderabad-based Centre for Good Governance on February 27-28, 2006 highlighted several of the problems plaguing cotton cultivation.
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