India emerged as a ‘Deal Maker’ at the WTO talks: Piyush Goyal

India was the voice of the Developing and Least Developed Countries, the Commerce and Industry Minister said

Far from being initially projected as a ‘Deal Breaker’ by certain countries, India finally emerged as a ‘Deal Maker’ at the WTO talks, Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal has said.

Addressing a press conference on Monday after leading the Indian delegation to the12th Ministerial Conference (MC12) of the WTO in Geneva, Goyal said, “We neither came under any pressure, nor buckled under pressure at any time”.

Goyal also pointed out that India had emerged as the voice of the Developing and Least Developed Countries (LDCs) at MC12.

“Almost every WTO decision bears India’s signature, India is seen leading from the front and India’s concerns are visible prominently in the outcome documents. We have been cent percent successful in stating our point of view, getting our agenda approved at the talks,” he added.

Goyal said several decisions have emerged from the MC12 after a long time. “In fact, a statement also has emerged out of WTO after seven years,” said Goyal, a day after returning from his Europe visit.

According to Goyal, there has been progress during the MC12 at the WTO on several issues, a slew of international agreements have been arrived at after a gap of several years. India not only secured the interests of its farmers, fishermen, MSME sector, poor people and all sections but also ensured their concerns are preserved in the future, he pointed out.

“In fact, few countries stated that India was not allowing any agreement. Reality was very different! The reality was that a few countries created hurdles towards agreement with the vain hope that they could rope in India later, make India hop the bandwagon and that India’s voice is lost in the din,” he said.

Elaborating in the success of the WTO talks, Goyal said before the MC12, everybody had written off multilateralism, stating that bilateralism is the way forward but the MC12 has been the most successful conference.

“No one expected agreements on an array of issues. We have come up with very important decisions. This WTO’s success is largely because of India’s leadership as we helped navigate everybody’s view point,” he said.

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