Government of India (GOI) has constituted an Inter-Ministerial task force under the Department of Animal Husbandry, Dairying and Fisheries in the Ministry of Agriculture, with the responsibility to work out specific strategies required from time to time for India’s constructive interventions in the WTO negotiations on fisheries subsidies.
GOI had reiterated before the WTO Negotiating Group on Rules (NGR), its stand on the need for Special & Differential (S&D) Treatment for the developing countries in line with the Ministerial Decisions under Doha Development Agenda in 2001 and the Hong Kong Ministerial Meet of 2005. Flexibilities, particularly for the artisanal, poor and subsistence fishermen, is the major element of India’s interventions in these negotiations.