India's Piyush Goyal raises WTO & supply chain issues at BRICS meeting

Goyal, Union minister of commerce and industry, consumer affairs, food and public distribution, and textiles, stressed upon building trust among each other and expressed strong belief in small, achievable, incremental steps towards WTO Reform. He also expressed how India wishes to see an invigorated, improved, inclusive WTO as it completes three decades, talking about ‘30 for 30’, which is an effort to bring at least 30 operational improvements to the WTO before the organisation completes 30 years, i.e., by January 1, 2025, India’s ministry of commerce and industry said in a press release.

The BRICS theme for this year was ‘BRICS and Africa: Partnership for Mutually Accelerated Growth, Sustainable Development and Inclusive Multilateralism’. The minister lauded South Africa on having an ambitious agenda and successfully completing outcome-oriented activities under the Contact Group on Economic and Trade Issues (CGETI).

As BRICS members are also a part of G20, he sought cooperation for significant outcomes under the ‘Trade and Investment Working Group’ of G20 under India’s presidency.

Goyal also made it clear that for collective efforts amongst the BRICS countries, the utmost important issue would be to work in a trust-based open atmosphere through transparency and sharing information. In this context, he also expressed disappointment that even within the BRICS membership, a few members had expressed concerns on transparency. There are concerted efforts to bring in non-tariff barriers through the use of non-science based sanitary and phyto-sanitary measures to stall the collective efforts of the BRICS countries, which is the core of collaborative efforts for trade. He made it clear that unless trade and investment activities are carried out cooperatively in a transparent manner, it would not yield the desired results.

On supply chains, Goyal stressed that the principles of trust and transparency along with security and diversification were the most important factors for resilient and robust supply chains. This will be the foundation for ensuring an early warning system amongst BRICS countries which would play an important role in preventing wide ranging disruptions as were experienced during COVID-19.

On digital economy, while acknowledging that technology is a great equaliser and not a source of division, the minister expressed deep concern over deprivation of the access to virtual platforms, tele-medicine, distance education, and e-payments. He mentioned about pro-active actions and the concerted decision taken by India to adopt a whole-of-society approach to digital technology and improved public services. Goyal mentioned the initiatives taken by India under the able leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, aiming at bridging the digital divide by leveraging cost-effective technology-based solutions.

Goyal expressed the need to focus on key areas like exploring cooperation in the form of research and development, technology transfers, and joint ventures as well as the business development opportunities for possible partnerships in the future.

On mispricing and under-invoicing, the minister expressed his concern about the negative impact trade mispricing and under-invoicing has on the economies.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (NB)