Important proposal by India and China for upcoming 11th Ministerial Conference of the WTO to be held in Buenos Aires in December 2017.
Counters efforts to remove subsidies of the developing countries while letting the developed countries retain their huge farm subsidies.
Background
Developed countries, including the US, the EU, and Canada provide trade-distorting subsidies to their farmers at much higher levels than ceiling of developing countries.
Developed countries have more than 90% of global AMS entitlements amounting to nearly US $ 160 bn.
Developing countries, including India and China largely do not have AMS entitlements.
In developed world, subsidies for many items over 50% and some even more that 100% of the value of production of the product concerned, while developing countries forced to contain it within 10% of the value of production.
Developed members have huge amount of AMS beyond their de minimis- minimal amounts of domestic support allowed even though they distort trade that is up to 5% of the value of production for developed countries, 10% for developing.
Elimination of AMS according to India and China believe is the starting point of reforms.
Subsidies in India provide a subsistence amount of about US $ 260 per farmer per annum compared to over 100 times more in some developed countries.