India has pitched for flexibility in global intellectual property rights (IPR) agreements, in order to ensure access to essential medicines and vaccines at affordable rates to all as the world grapples with the Covid-19 pandemic.
At the virtual General Council Meeting of the World Trade Organization on Friday, New Delhi also said there was an “urgent need” to build the digital capacities of developing countries and least developed countries (LDC) so that they benefit from e-education and tele-medicine.
Highlighting its five priorities at the WTO, India called for effective use of flexibilities inherent in the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) to ensure access to essential medicines, treatments and vaccines to all at affordable prices, especially in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic.
It stressed on building capacities of developing countries and LDCs in areas like digital skills and broadband infrastructure so that the benefits of e-commerce applications like e-education, tele-medicine, electronic payments and use of digital platforms for sourcing goods and services are available to all.
“The requirement of new sources of revenue for developing countries including LDCs has also underlined the need for ending the e-commerce moratorium on imposing customs duties on electronic-transmissions,” it said.
India also emphasised that the Appellate Body impasse has to be resolved at the earliest.
“During the last three years, the WTO has faced some of the most challenging times. The paralysis of the WTO and its consequential ineffectiveness is not any longer a theoretical possibility; it may turn into a tragic reality,” India’s Ambassador to the WTO, JS Deepak, said during his intervention on Friday.
Deepak, a 1982 batch IAS officer of Uttar Pradesh cadre, assumed charge as India’s envoy to the world trade body in June 2017. His tenure as India’s ambassador to WTO ended on Sunday.
India also flagged other priority areas such as ensuring food security and elimination of the historic asymmetries in entitlements in the Agreement on Agriculture and completion of negotiations on disciplines on fisheries subsidies with appropriate special and differential treatment for developing countries including LDCs to protect their small and subsistence fishermen.
On the issue of Kazakhstan re-offering to host the Ministerial Conference in June 2021, India said the certainty of dates will “help mute criticism that the WTO has not held a Ministerial Conference at a critical time when both trade and the rules-based multilateral system have been under serious threat”.
Source: indiatimes.com