India rejects WTO proposal for fisheries deal
Recently India has rejected the proposal of the World Trade Organization (WTO) for a fisheries deal.
- India has rejected a revised draft of the discussion on the Fisheries deal Subsidy Agreement proposed by the World Trade Organization. According to India it is weak and unbalanced, and favors developed countries.
- India argued that the agreement did not consider suggestions to justify the system.
- This is in favor of countries such as Norway, China and Japan, which are exploiting international waters.
- Ongoing talks on fisheries aim to ban some forms of fisheries subsidies, which contribute to overfishing and over-capacity storage. In addition, there is a need to discipline subsidies and eliminate illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing subsidies.
- India is seeking shared but differentiated responsibilities and wants to extend its philosophy of climate change to these talks.
- According to the Indian proposal, countries engaged in fishing in remote waters beyond their natural geographic area should eliminate subsidies for 25 years in areas beyond their Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs).
- India also wants the developing countries to get more time to fulfill their obligations and the subsidies given by it should be used to provide stability to the poor fishermen in India.
- India is the second largest fish-producing country in the world and provides livelihood to about 16 million Indian fishermen.
- India is also a major producer of fish through aquaculture and ranks second in the world after China.
Source – The Hindu
