New Delhi: Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal on Tuesday called for waiver of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) in World Trade Organisation (WTO) and dismantling new trade barriers in the global fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Our response to the pandemic needs to ensure equitable access to vaccines and other COVID-19 related health products by ensuring quick resolution of the supply side constraints. One of the ways to demonstrate this is by accepting the TRIPS waiver proposal,” Goyal said at the G20 Trade and Investment Ministerial Meeting in Naples, Italy.
“We need to actively resolve new trade barriers like vaccine differentiations or COVID passports, which impose mobility restrictions and impede the movement of personnel needed for delivering critical services,” he added.
He urged countries engaged in distant water fishing to stop subsidizing their fishing in high seas and gradually reduce their fishing capacities, particularly, for overfished stocks
Asking developing countries to fulfil their commitments regarding Transfer Of Technology and Climate Finance, he said, “India among few countries on track to exceed SDG commitments as per the Paris Agreement.”
He met ministers at G20 to advance India’s trade position and negotiated bilateral and multilateral agreements.
“We need to actively resolve new trade barriers like vaccine differentiations or COVID passports, which impose mobility restrictions and impede the movement of personnel needed for delivering critical services,” said Goyal.
Goyal held bilateral meetings with the Director General of the WTO, US, UK, EU, Brazil, China, Australia, South Africa, Indonesia, Canada, South Korea and Mexico. “Historical wrongs against developing countries must be corrected rather than being carried over.”
In his meetings with the Canadian minister, he discussed steps to take forward the free trade agreement negotiations with the newly elected government while he called upon his South Korean and EU counterparts to accelerate review of the FTA.