Suchergebnisse

Over the past seven decades, since the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was established in 1947, there has been a phenomenal increase in international trade in goods, largely due to sustained efforts by the world's main trading nations to reduce and eliminate tariff barriers in a multilaterally orchestrated manner. This publication reviews how the procedures and practices relating to tariff negotiations and renegotiations have evolved over this time. In particular, this new edition recounts how negotiations to expand the duty-free coverage of the Information Technology Agreement were concluded and provides an account of tariff renegotiations regarding successive enlargements of the European Union. It also covers tariff negotiations for the accession of a number of new members to the WTO, such as China and Russia. This book will be of particular interest to negotiators, members of government, trade ministries, economists and academics specialized in trade policy.

Contributed papers presented at a Seminar on WTO and Agriculture with Special Reference to Gujarat held at Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, 20-21 Jan. 2001

India's graduation from the ranks of low-income countries, making it ineligible under the WTO rules to grant export subsidies on manufactures has thrown up a new policy challenge. In this context, this paper argues for the government to rethink its export incentives programme altogether and take alternative policy actions and adopt measures that restore or improve export competitiveness but do not constitute subsidies at all under the WTO Agreement. First, it should introduce a comprehensive scheme for refund of unrebated state and central taxes, taking full care to stay within the parameters laid down in Annex II of the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures. Secondly, it should undertake a mini-liberalising initiative to reduce import tariffs on capital goods to about half of the current level and make commensurate reductions in the tariffs of intermediate goods used in the production of capital goods. Thirdly, and most importantly, it should intensify the programmes underway to rapidly improve transport infrastructure, logistics and trade facilitation. The panel report in the dispute raised by the US in the WTO has gone against India but India has lodged an appeal. Since the Appellate Body has become dysfunctional the panel report will remain blocked indefinitely. Eventually India may have to take steps towards compliance or else it will face the threat of retaliation from the US. But it could and should argue for the US to agree on a staged compliance in view of the structural and fundamental nature of policy change recommended by the panel.

The enactment of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Rehabilitation Act, 2013, has made sweeping changes in the land acquisition laws of India (LARR Act, 2013). By increasing the compensation for acquired land, mandating a social impact assessment to be undertaken and requiring the prior consent of land holders in particular cases, the Act has no doubt corrected the imbalance that existed between the interests of land-owners and of the government as the custodian of public interest in the earlier land acquisition procedures. It has significantly increased transparency in the land acquisition process and given a voice to land owners in decisions on land acquisition. But the implementation of the Act, as originally enacted, could also retard the development process by slowing down the building of public infrastructure, and the processes of industrialisation and urbanisation. It could impede the provision of affordable housing for the vast majority of the population moving from rural to urban areas, which is crucial for controlling the spontaneous development of sprawls taking place across the country. The central government has tried to alleviate some of the adverse effects by introducing an amendment bill but its passage in Parliament has been stalled. Six states, however, have obtained presidential assent for carrying out amendments on the lines of the bill introduced in Parliament. This paper analyses the LARR Act, 2013, examines its impact on the development process and makes recommendations on the way forward for the central and state governments to lighten the adverse effects on infrastructure, industrialisation and urbanisation. While analysing the developments on urbanisation, the paper also makes an assessment of the possible expansion of urban settlements in the country in future and of the impact of such expansion on the area under agriculture.

Rural indebtedness and dependence on private moneylenders is an age-old problem in India. For more than 100 years now, the Central Government and the Reserve Bank of India have been making efforts to enhance institutional credit in rural areas particularly to assist in agricultural operations. It began with the enactment of the Co-operative Credit Societies Act (1904) but efforts were redoubled after the nationalisation of Scheduled Commercial Banks in 1969. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the measures taken over the years and assess the extent to which they have been successful. It attempts to answer the question, "Is the agenda of expansion of institutional finance to agriculture unfinished?" The findings in the paper are inconclusive on this issue on account of contradictions in evidence: while the 2013 AIDIS survey finds that noninstitutional lenders still account for only 36 per cent of the total outstanding agricultural loan, the short-term credit from institutional sources in 2012-13 covered 100 per cent of the input cost in agriculture in that year according to the National Accounts Statistics.

An important segment of labour regulations concerns the protection aspects of social security. These regulations provide safety nets or fall back mechanisms to enable workers to cope with crises that affect households from time to time, such as illness, employment injury, death or old age. This paper critically reviews and analyses existing regulations in India that provide fall back mechanisms and evaluates how they compare with systems in selected comparator countries and measure up against the minimum standards recommended in various ILO Conventions. These regulations are important not only from the point of view of the welfare of society but also from the perspective of efficiency of the work force in any activity. The analysis reveals serious shortcomings in the social security legislation and programmes in the country insofar as they apply to the unorganised workers. The paper concludes by making recommendations on alternative approaches to redress the deficiencies.

Bihar's agricultural development in the latest 10 years between 2005-06 and 2014-15, presents a mixed picture. Agriculture growth was around 4.7 per cent, which was above the national average of 3.6 per cent and in the latest five years, its performance was even more commendable, with an average annual growth rate of 7.1 per cent. However, agriculture productivity of two of its major crops, rice and wheat, is lower than the national average, despite the relatively high private investment in yield augmenting inputs such as fertilisers, certified seeds, tube wells and farm machines. Bihar's agriculture has diversified impressively through dairy development although productivity in milk production is lagging behind other major milk producing states, but poultry development has not taken off. In this paper, we study the composition, sources and drivers of agricultural growth in Bihar with a view to identifying the factors that explain the paradox of low agricultural productivity and high use of productivity augmenting inputs. The study finds that poor public investment in power, all-weather roads and marketing infrastructure, have constrained agriculture in Bihar. In particular, deficiencies in the power infrastructure have resulted in high dependency on diesel for pumping out groundwater for irrigation; this, along with soaring petroleum prices, has depressed returns from cultivation of crops. Further, the proportion of surfaced roads in the state is one of the lowest in the country and needs attention in order to link farmers to markets. Another major difficulty that farmers in Bihar face is the lack of marketing infrastructure, resulting in their inability to reap the price incentives given by the Government of India in the form of minimum support price. Livestock development has not achieved its potential because of strategic deficiencies. In dairy, productivity has remained low because germ plasm from superior breeds has not been used. In poultry, the culture of contract farming involving large integrator companies has not yet been adopted. In the light of these findings, the study makes five principal recommendations to stimulate agricultural growth and productivity in the state, viz., improve the quality and quantity of rural power supply by strengthening transmission and distribution and obtaining separation of feeders for irrigation, increase in the intensity of surfaced roads in rural areas, improve procurement and marketing infrastructure, improve health and reproduction management of dairy animals and obtain a quantum increase in poultry by employing the integrator model as has been done in states like Andhra Pradesh and Odisha.