India on Wednesday said that developed and developing countries should now 'close their differences' and move forward after the Cancun debacle but felt more 'transparency' in decision-making process was needed at the WTO to help towards this end.
"The WTO decision making process should now become more transparent and inclusive to prevent failures like that of Cancun," special secretary in commerce ministry S N Menon told a conference on Cancun Ministerial.
Since everybody knows the divergences after the collapse of the Cancun ministerial, he said it would now be easier to close them and move forward as bilateral and regional trade agreements were no substitute for rule-based multilateral trading system.
Former Indian Ambassador to WTO S Narayanan, who also spoke at the conference jointly organised by European Union and Administrative Staff College of India said that he did not agree with the view that there should be any change in the decision making process of WTO in the face of frequent failures of meetings.
"The present approach of decision making through consensus is no doubt slow and tortuous but it is time-tested and only practical way," he said.
