NEW DELHI: Repeated but failed attempts by developing countries to reach convergence with rich nations on the stalled Doha Round of WTO forced India to work for speedy completion of Free Trade Agreements in 2007 to tap newer markets.
As India needs larger engagement with the world for sustaining the pace of its economic growth, it took lead along with Brazil and South Africa in pushing the Doha talks through a series of formal and informal meetings, but the prospects of a trade deal fair to the developing countries remained dim.
"It was a disappointing year at the WTO. Despite the desire of all countries, particularly developing countries, the Doha Development Round has not moved to convergence," Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath said.
As a key WTO player, India remained engaged actively at various fora not only in WTO headquarters in Geneva and at the level of trade ministers, but also showed its flexibility and commitment as expressed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Singh conveyed the country's desire for a give-and-take on Doha at least on a couple of occasions to US President George Bush and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva during the year.
Though Nath gets along quite well with European Union Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson and US Trade Representative Susan Schwab, he proved to be a tough negotiator "making right kind of noises" along with his Brazilian counterpart Celso Amorim when it came to opening markets and cutting duties.
The multilateral talks remained stalled, mainly on agricultural subsidy with the developing countries wanting the rich nations, particularly the US and EU, to cut their farm subsidies which distort term of trade for farm products from India, Brazil, China, South Africa.
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