Japan, India to work to revise WTO trade liberalization proposal

Japan's farm minister Toshikatsu Matsuoka and Indian Minister of Commerce and Industry Kamal Nath agreed in a phone conversation Monday to cooperate in their efforts to revise the World Trade Organization's recently presented trade liberalization proposal, Japanese government officials said.

The two ministers took the view that the WTO proposal on farm produce trade, which has been drawn up in the process of the ongoing Doha round of multilateral trade talks, are not balanced in that they are harsh on certain member nations of the Geneva-based international trade body, according to the officials.

The proposal, which was unveiled by Crawford Falconer, chairman of the WTO's agriculture negotiations committee, on April 30, calls for limiting the number of ''sensitive'' farm products on which the member states of the organization want to maintain high tariff rates to 5 percent of all tariff lines.

Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Matsuoka, during the talks with the Indian minister, said the WTO proposal present very strict terms on which Japan is to open its agricultural product markets as compared with the terms offered to the United States for slashing its farm subsidies, according to the officials.

Nath reportedly told Matsuoka that the WTO proposal is unfair for developing nations.

According to the Japanese agriculture ministry, the number of products contained in Japan's tariff line currently stands at 1,326. Of these, high tariffs are imposed on 17 rice products, 20 wheat products, 56 sugar products and 47 dairy products.

The number of ''sensitive products'' on which Japan wants to maintain high tariffs would be lowered to 66 if the limit of up to 5 percent is applied.

The WTO paper on the other hand proposed that the United States slash its domestic agricultural subsidies to below $19 billion and ''somewhere above the very low teens.'' Washington, however, has proposed setting an annual floor of $22.7 billion in subsidies.