Developing countries stand to emerge as losers after India blocked a World Trade Organization deal to streamline global trade, Western governments warned Friday, according to dpa. The deadline for ratifying the trade facilitation agreement aimed at standardizing and streamlining customs procedures expired at midnight. The terms had been agreed in Bali, Indonesia in December. New Delhi insisted that in exchange for signing the deal it must see more progress on a parallel pact giving it more freedom to subsidize and stockpile food grains than is allowed by WTO rules. "There are no winners from this outcome - least of all those in developing countries which would see the biggest gains," Australian Trade Minister Andrew Robb said. "That agreement would have reduced trade costs, especially in developing countries, and would have generated hundreds of billions of dollars in much needed economic activity," said Michael Froman, the US ambassador at the WTO. However, WTO Director General Roberto Azevedo made clear that the trade facilitation deal is not dead yet and asked the 160 WTO member states at a meeting Thursday night to use the coming weeks to find a compromise. India's previous government had agreed in Bali that the food subsidy issue would be solved by 2017. However, the government under current Prime Minister Narendra Modi insisted on progress by the end of the year. A small number of countries including Cuba and Venezuela supported India's new stance at the WTO. An Indian commerce ministry official insisted Friday that India "would not move forward on trade facilitation agreement in the absence of a concrete framework to find a permanent solution on the public food stockpile which is necessary for India's food security programme." India's main goal was to secure a favourable solution regarding the country's food subsidy programme, said Nalin Kohli, spokesman for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. "It is not about business or trade. It is about survival," he said. "What is our priority - to protect marginalised sections of society or to earn brownie points on image?," he added. The Chambers of Indian Industry said one solution could be to push back the deadline for ratifying the trade facilitation deal until the end of the year. The package of deals reached by WTO members in Bali also contained steps to help poor countries access developed and emerging markets, as well as aid measures, and it was seen as a way to revive the stalled Doha round of free-trade negotiations. The Bali package would create some 21 million jobs world-wide, the International Chamber of Commerce has estimated. Japan's mission to the WTO said Friday that "the future of the Doha Round including the Bali package is now being jeopardized." Azevedo said that the world's biggest economies have other options to negotiate trade pacts, but that developing countries stand to suffer if multilateral WTO talks fail. "They're the ones that may no longer have a seat at the table," he said. "My fear is that the smaller and more vulnerable an economy is, the more it will suffer."
