India on Monday said that high domestic support and export subsidies in the United States and the European Union were responsible for depressed farm prices, which in turn were hurting poor farmers in the developing countries.
"We made it amply clear that depressed farm prices were hurting farmers in countries like India as they were not getting remunerative prices for their produce," Commerce Minister Arun Jaitley is believed to have told US trade representative Robert Zoellick and EU Trade Commissioner, Pascal Lamy when he met them separately for one-to-one bilateral meeting in Cancun on Monday. Jaitley is leading the India delegation to the Fifth World Trade Organisation ministerial to start in Cancun, Mexico on September 10.
Jaitley was categorical in telling the US and EU that reforms in agriculture should start first in Europe and America.
Apart from agriculture, Singapore issues -- particularly whether there should be investment and competition rules in WTO -- are likely to dominate the five-day ministerial beginning on Wednesday.
Jaitley, who has planned a series of bilaterals, met a group of developed and least developed countries as well on Monday.
The countries, which participated in the dinner hosted by Jaitley included Jamaica, Guyana, Nigeria, Botswana, Bangladesh, China, Brazil and Venezuela.
"We did exchange views on transparency of procedure and functioning," Jaitley told reporters.
Coming out of the bilateral meeting with Jaitley, Lamy said: " We are friends of India, China and other developing countries."
He did not agree that there was a north-south divide and said, "We have resolved the issue of supplying cheap medicines to the poor countries and now we want to move forward."
Lamy, however, parried questions on whether there were sharp differences on agricultural issues.
