Protect people’s interest at WTO meet, SJM tells Centre

Hyderabad: The Swadeshi Jagaran Manch (SJM) has demanded interest of people of India in various sectors of trade and commerce be protected in any negotiation at the biennial 13th WTO ministerial conference being held at Abu Dhabi on February 26-29.

The SJM south India co-convener Dr S Lingamurthy from the conference appealed to the government to ensure interest of people in long term while agreeing, as well as signing any agreement. The Indian delegation is led by Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal. The WTO meet is organised to deliberate on various ongoing agendas and for negotiation of several trade issues involving imports and exports of goods and services amongst 164 member-countries representing about 90%t of global population.

The SJM demanded food security and food stock holding as well as agricultural subsidies be protected at all costs. It wanted any effort by large corporates to bring fisheries and subsidies on fisheries under the purview of WTO be avoided as fisheries are not currently under WTO regulations on agriculture.

The service sector visa rules of developed nations need to be liberalised to allow labour and professionals from India and other developing nations can get easy access to the service markets of developed nations. A 12-member team of experts from different professional areas are visiting Abu Dhabi from India as a part of the SJM team to coordinate, cooperate and collaborate with a wide range of NGOs from different nations to promote causes like food security, fishing rights, livelihood issues environmental security, service visa issues and on other topics of mutual interests as well as to promote South-South cooperation at people to people level.