NEW DELHI SITE OF TRADE FREE AGREEMENT FOR 2010.

Trade ministers began talks in New Delhi on Thursday which World Trade Organization (WTO) chief Pascal Lamy said could prepare the ground for reaching a world free-trade agreement by 2010. The WTO director general was concerned about the “chilling effect” of trade barriers and underlined that it was only through the Doha round that issues like generating market access, reduction of obstacles to trade and leveling the playing field in trade-distorting subsidies could be addressed.
Reaching an agreement by 2010 was “doable,” Australia’s Trade Minister Simon Crean said before the talks which were attended by key WTO members including United States, European Union and China.
Trade ministers are making a renewed effort to conclude the Doha pact after talks collapsed in July 2008 owing to differences over a special safeguard mechanism - a provision to permit developing countries to guard against sudden surges in imports or when commodity prices decline.
India’s Commerce Ministry said it was hosting the conclave aiming at the “resumption and intensification” of the Doha round which if completed, could open a 32-trillion-dollar global market.
As the meeting started, 10,000 activists from farmers groups and left-wing parties held protest demonstrations at various places in Delhi against the free trade conclave.
“It (the Doha deal) will severely increase the vulnerability of our agricultural sector to the vagaries of global trade, impacting our food security and over two-thirds of our population dependent on it,” a letter written by 174 farmers’ bodies and voluntary groups to Indian premier Manmohan Singh said.
The primary purpose for the talks is to build a consensus among a large number of countries on moving forward with the Doha round,” India’s Commerce Secretary Rahul Khullar said.