Investment facilitation: Government gets support from civil society

Civil society. backed govt's stand on. investment facilitation. for development (IFD), an agreement being pushed by China, Chile and South Korea amid a narrative being built by several rich nations to paint India as holding up talks in several areas at the WTO ministerial meeting that kicks off on Monday.. "Not only is there no mandate for these (investment facilitation) negotiations, there is a negative mandate..

Civil society groups have accused China of putting undue pressure on poorer nations, which they argued will not gain, and also questioned the role of WTO secretariat in pushing for inclusion in the talks..

Besides, you can't negotiate things in small groups and seek to legitimise them by getting it into the main agenda," an Indian negotiator said.. While the US, Pakistan and Sri Lanka are not signatories to the IFD agreement, at least at the moment, they are not against its inclusion as an annexure, something that India and South Africa are seeking to block..

Officials said that unlike the picture being painted by some of the developed nations, domestic regulation of services - which seeks to bring transparency in regulating sectors such as banking, telecom and even entry of lawyers and accountants - will help nations instead of just pushing the agenda of a handful of countries, as was the case with investment...

Separately, G33 group of countries on Sunday expressed serious concern over lack of progress in agriculture trade negotiations and urge the WTO members to work on a permanent solution to the issue of public stockholding of grains for food security purposes...

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