United States Democratic Party Presidential hopeful Barack Obama has finally reached the nomination of the Democratic Party by defeating Hillary Clinton. Although it is not official yet, Clinton will concede herself from the Democratic nomination race on Friday, supporting Obama in his contest with Republican candidate John McCain. Obama has already made statements claiming the Democratic nomination, and it is true that he does possess the number of delegates necessary to win the position; with the 2,154 delegates meeting the 2,118 delegate threshold, he has secured this nomination.

 

S. P. Shukla*
23rd May 2008

Implications of the Latest (19.05.08) Revised Texts on Agriculture and NAMA (Non-Agricultural Market Access)

Intrinsically, the latest texts do not change "the big picture" as far as developing countries are concerned: If anything, they confirm the apprehensions sounded repeatedly by many observers for some time that the attempted "round up" of the Doha process was tilting the outcome decisively against the interest of developing countries. This happens in the following ways.I

In Agriculture, despite the considerable "cleaning up" of the text by the Chairman, the fundamental imbalance persists. The market access sought by developed countries into the developing countries is ensured by the maintenance of the three-tiered tariff reduction formula which has been there for some time. Which, broadly speaking, requires developing countries to reduce their tariffs on agricultural products by 36 percent as against the developed countries obligation to reduce them by 54 percent. It must be noted that an average cut of 36 percent on bound tariffs in agriculture is a stiff proposition. As against this, the issue of elimination/substantial reduction in subsidies by developed countries, particularly USA, still remains hanging, awaiting “political solution" presumably at the ministerial conference. The possible range to which USA may agree to "bring down" the narrowly defined domestic support has been indicated at $12 - $16 billion, whereas the current level (2007) of such subsidies is only $11 billion per annum. Even if the USA finally accepts a middling figure in this range, it will be no great achievement towards the goal of substantial reduction. More so, because the subject matter of the attempted reduction constitutes only about 20 percent of the total state support whereas the remaining 80 percent of such support for the US agriculture is in the form of "green box "subsidies which are outside the range of reduction aimed at and are not subject to any worthwhile multilateral discipline, despite some provisions sought to be incorporated in the text for better "surveillance".

Thursday, 29 May 2008
Afsar Jafri*

The recent escalation in food prices is the latest calamity to hit the poor and marginalised communities in India. The price of food and other essentials has been rising for the last 12 weeks and the current inflation level is the highest witnessed since November 2004. Retail prices of some essential food commodities have seen a sharp increase. Retail prices of gram, sugar, mustard oil, vanaspati and onions have increased by up to 11 per cent in the national capital in last one month, pushing inflation to a 39-month high of seven per cent. (1)