The Doha round of trade liberalisation talks under the World Trade Organisation are expected to gather momentum in May and the G-20 meeting last week has helped the developing countries do the ground work and also reiterate their commitment to jointly take on the developed countries.
Trade negotiators from the G-20 member countries said Rob Portman was expected to be confirmed as the new US trade representative in a month and the negotiations were expected to be back on track by May with a mini-ministerial scheduled in Paris on the sidelines of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development meet.
This is to be followed by a meeting of the least developed countries in Livingstone, Zambia, where the European Union and the US have also been invited. Another mini-ministerial is scheduled in Beijing in July.
The attempt is to ensure that an agreement is in place latest by next year and nearly all member countries are working in that direction.
At the same time, the developing countries also wanted to avoid a situation like the one in Cancun, where their point of view was not taken on board in the draft ministerial declaration, said a trade negotiator.
Thus the declaration released after the New Delhi meet is aimed at putting in place the common stand on agriculture.
To ensure that the G-20, comprising countries like India, China, Brazil and South Africa, members continued to receive the support of the poorer countries, an attempt has been made to have them as special invitees and also factor in some of their concerns in the declaration -- a case in point being agriculture subsidies.
"We are wiser from our experience. They talk of something, but do not keep the promise," said Zambian Commerce, Trade and Industry Minister Dipal KA Patel. Zambia is the co-ordinator of the group of the least developed countries.
The developed countries had to address larger developmental issues as even the preferences available to the poorer countries were not being used because of lack of capacity, Patel added.
While the G-20 trade ministers were not expected to meet in the coming days, official level talks were scheduled in May and again in July, said Brazilian ambassador to WTO Luiz Felipe Seixas Correa.
Indian trade officials said they would try for simultaneous movement on all subjects --agriculture, services, industrial sector -- under negotiations.
"You cannot move in isolation. Besides, by moving only on agriculture, the developed countries will try to use, say, market access as a negotiating chip for export subsidies," said a commerce department official.
The G-20's to discuss services and industrial tariff here was an attempt to sensitise the members about their interests and ensure that the differences in these two areas were not used by the developed countries to their advantage in the agriculture negotiations.