Govt to soon announce WTO breakthrough, say sources

A breakthrough is expected in talks between the government and the World Trade Organization (WTO) to end a deadlock on implementing a global trade deal struck in 2013, two sources close to the talks said on Thursday.

"The minister is going to announce a breakthrough at the WTO," said one of the sources, who spoke on conditions of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak on the record to the press.

Trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman was due to give a statement shortly, a government official in the national capital said.

At the end of July, Prime Minister Narendra Modi pulled the plug on implementing a Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) struck in Bali in 2013, linking it to the emotive issue of rural poverty in the country.

The government had wanted indefinitely to extend a 'peace clause' to protect a subsidised food distribution scheme until the WTO could strike a definitive deal on stockpiling. In Bali, the WTO agreed that the clause would expire in four years.

The trade row had isolated the domestic economy and plunged the trade body into its worst crisis in two decades, as countries led by the United States considered abandoning the principle of consensus under which the 160-nation group works.

(Reuters)