India tells WTO it won't lift wheat export ban
In a submission to the WTO's Committee on Agriculture on Tuesday. circulated on Wednesday, India said its temporary ban on wheat exports, first imposed in May 2022, remains in place due to ongoing volatility in global wheat prices and the need to ensure domestic availability.
India said it has "imposed a temporary ban on wheat exports by changing the policy from 'free' to 'prohibited', in line with Article XI:2(a) of the GATT 1994 and Article 12.1 of the Agreement on Agriculture.'
However, India has kept a window open for humanitarian or diplomatic exceptions, stating that wheat exports may be permitted to countries upon specific government-to-government requests to meet their food security needs.
Earlier, Mint reported on 21 May that the government will not lift the ban on wheat and wheat product exports, prioritizing price stability during the upcoming festival and state election seasons.
The government expects wheat production to rise 2% to a record 115.4 million tonnes (mt) in the 2024-25 rabi season, mainly on account of higher acreage.
'Wheat is a staple food for millions, and ensuring its availability at affordable prices is crucial,' the India notification stated. 'Several factors have made the global price of wheat volatile, putting the food security of India, neighbouring countries and vulnerable countries at risk,' it said.
The measure, effective from 13 May 2022, was introduced in response to a combination of geopolitical tensions, climate-induced production concerns, and rising global demand that led to a sharp escalation in wheat prices globally.
India is among the top producers of wheat globally but is not a major exporter. Nevertheless, the country's decision to curb outbound shipments drew criticism from some WTO members when first announced, particularly amid global shortages triggered by the Russia-Ukraine war, which disrupted supplies from the Black Sea region.
In FY23, India exported 4.7 mt of wheat, valued at $1.52 billion. However, exports dropped significantly to 0.19 mt in FY24 and further to 2,749 tonnes during April-February 2024-25, according to commerce ministry data.
Since the ban, only limited quantities have been allowed through diplomatic channels and on humanitarian grounds.
The notification did not provide a specific end-date for the measure, only noting that it would remain until the conditions necessitating it no longer persist.
Despite meeting procurement targets, the government is proceeding cautiously to avoid sparking retail food inflation, which is currently at its lowest, ahead of assembly polls.
Before the ban, India exported wheat and wheat products mainly to South Asia, West Asia and Africa. Top buyers included Bangladesh, Indonesia, the UAE, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Djibouti, and Somalia. In addition, Nepal, Bhutan, and Gulf nations like Oman and Qatar were key importers of processed wheat products.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Hindu
2 hours ago
- The Hindu
Indian fuel exports escape Trump's tariff net, no Russian penalty yet
India's exports of petroleum products such as diesel and jet fuel to the U.S. continue to be exempted from the levy of any import duty or tariff, and President Donald Trump has, for now, not indicated the penalty he plans to impose to deter New Delhi's energy trade with Russia. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump had announced plans to impose a 25% tariff on India, along with an additional penalty, citing concerns over the country's energy and defence ties with Russia, as well as existing trade barriers. However, the executive order he signed thereafter only gives effect to the 25% tariff on Indian goods coming to the U.S. Even this has an exclusion list that includes finished pharmaceutical products (tablets, injectables and syrups), active pharmaceutical ingredients, electronics and ICT goods (semiconductors, smartphones, SSDs and computers), and petroleum products (crude oil, LNG, refined fuels, electricity and coal). The executive order also does not indicate any penalty that is to be levied for Russian trade. According to official data, India exported 4.86 million tonnes of petroleum products to the U.S. in fiscal year 2024-25 (April 2024 to March 2025) for over $4 billion. Reliance Industries Ltd is the biggest exporter of fuel to the U.S. With fuel exports continuing to be on the exemption list, it means business as usual for India and companies like Reliance, analysts said. Also, a relief would be if no penalty is imposed to punish India for its oil imports from Russia, they said, adding that for now, the U.S. administration has not indicated any penalty. "For now, there is nothing but you never know," an analyst said. From just 0.2% before the Russia-Ukraine war to now accounting for 35-40% of total crude imports, India's reliance on Russian oil has surged — drawing fresh scrutiny with Mr. Trump announcing a penalty on top of a 25% tariff, or tax, on all goods going to the U.S. India historically bought most of its oil from the Middle East, including Iraq and Saudi Arabia. However, things changed when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. India, the world's third-largest crude importer after China and the U.S., began snapping up Russian oil that was available at a discount after some in the West shunned it as a means to punish Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine. From a market share of just 0.2% in India's import basket before the start of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Russia overtook Iraq and Saudi Arabia to become India's No.1 supplier, with a share as high as 40% at one point of time. This month, Russia supplied 36% of all crude oil, which is converted into fuels like petrol and diesel, that India imported. Announcing the imposition of 25% tariff or tax on all Indian goods going to the U.S., Mr. Trump had said New Delhi "always bought a vast majority of their military equipment from Russia, and are Russia's largest buyer of energy, along with China, at a time when everyone wants Russia to STOP THE KILLING IN UKRAINE." "India will therefore be paying a tariff of 25%, plus a penalty for the above (Russian purchases), starting on August First," he said in a post on social media. India bought 68,000 barrels per day of crude oil from Russia in January 2022, according to global real-time data and analytics provider Kpler. That month, Indian imports from Iraq were 1.23 million bpd and 883,000 bpd from Saudi Arabia. In June 2022, Russia overtook Iraq to become India's largest oil supplier. That month, it supplied 1.12 million bpd as compared to 993,000 bpd that came from Iraq and 695,000 bpd from Saudi Arabia. Russian imports peaked to 2.15 million bpd in May 2023 and have varied since then, depending on the discount at which the oil was available. But the volumes never slipped below 1.4 million bpd, which is more than what India was buying from its top supplier Iraq before the Russia-Ukraine conflict. In July, imports from Russia averaged 1.8 million bpd, almost double of 950,000 bpd imports from Iraq. Saudi imports stood at 630,000 bpd, according to Kpler. After the Ukraine war, Western energy sanctions against Russia pushed it to cut prices for those buyers still willing to purchase its crude. The discounts on Russia's flagship Urals crude to Brent — the world's most well-known benchmark — were as high as $40 per barrel at one point but have been trimmed since to less than $ 3. G7 countries in December 2022 imposed a $60 per barrel price cap on Russian crude. Under the mechanism, European companies were permitted to transport and insure shipments of Russian oil to third countries as long as it is sold below the capped price — an effort to limit the impact of the sanctions on global oil flows but ensure Russia earns less from the trade. Last month, the European Union decided to lower the price cap to $47.6 and introduced an automatic and dynamic mechanism for its review in the future. The idea is to keep the cap at 15% lower than the average market price. In addition to stoking India's economy, cheap Russian oil gave refiners lucrative business — refining that crude and exporting the products to deficit countries. These included the European Union, which had banned direct crude oil purchases from Russia. This month, the European Union decided to ban the import of refined oil produced from Russian crude.
The Hindu
3 hours ago
- The Hindu
What has been missed is India's digital sovereignty
The India-United Kingdom Free Trade Agreement (FTA), called the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), has been lauded by the Union Commerce and Industry Minister, Piyush Goyal, as the 'gold standard' for all India's trade deals. Mr. Goyal has asserted that no compromise was made in any sensitive sector. Evidently, the Minister seemed to be counting only agriculture and labour-intensive manufacturing as sensitive sectors — which they are. But remarkably, despite the wide coverage the FTA has received, the impact on India's other, highly sensitive digital sector, which permeates every sphere of national activity and holds the key to our future, has gone without official comment or media scrutiny. We argue that the compromises made in the digital sector through the India-U.K. FTA have profound consequences for India's digital sovereignty — a term frequently invoked in high-level political discourse. India has completely flipped on several core positions that it has long maintained at global forums, including at the World Trade Organization (WTO). Source code disclosure The most surprising giveaway is on India's sovereign right to seek ex ante access to the source code for foreign digital goods or services, even for those deemed sensitive. This is very different from getting source code ex post for a specific investigation or remedy, which is allowed under the agreement. Regulators in different sectors often have strict disclosure rules, such as for food and medicine ingredients. Software now permeates nearly every product, including telecom, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and health applications, whereby it may be crucial for the regulators to be able to 'look under the hood' of software, for safety, security and general compliance requirements, and to enable urgent, real-time upgrades. Giving up this right is a 180-degree turn from India's steadfast stand at the WTO and other forums. Even the United States, which first included source code related prohibitions in its FTAs and at the WTO, withdrew this formulation last year, recognising its domestic regulatory, law enforcement and security imperatives. In the U.S. driven Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), the 'source code disclosure' provision applied only to mass-market software such as Microsoft's operating systems — meaning not to niche and custom-made software. It specifically excluded software for critical infrastructure. In the U.K. FTA text, the prohibition applies to all software. Businesses are always free to enter, or avoid, transactions requiring disclosure of source code. What is sacrificed here are India's regulatory rights in this regard, for all times to come, in a sector that has just begun to take shape. Surrendering a critical national resource Granting equal and non-discriminatory access for U.K. parties to 'Open Government Data' — a term from the pre-digital era which then meant government transparency, and access to its statistics — constitutes another major giveaway. This is because data is not what it used to be. Today, it has acquired an entirely new avatar, being the digital era's most valuable resource. AI, where heated competition for global mastery is raging, is but patterns derived from data, which is why data is deemed to be priceless. This concession is very significant, even though this provision is yet at a 'best endeavour' level, and non-binding. It is incomprehensible why India (where the intention to be an AI superpower is a staple of top-level political rhetoric), has conceded that national data held by the government is not a sovereign resource but an international free for all. Facilitating foreign access to such data poses risks of eroding India's competitive advantage in using India's own data to create Indian AI products, and also serious security risks as national data can be weaponised. The most contested issues in digital trade are the 'free flow of data' and 'data localisation'. While India seems to have largely stood its ground on these issues, its commitment to 'enter into consultations to extend appropriate equivalent disciplines' to the U.K. if India agrees to any concessions with another country, denotes a dangerous regress, and visible vulnerability, with regard to India's long-held positions on these key issues. This matter links to the one above on India's data being an important national economic resource as well as the need to safeguard it from a security point of view. Again, last year, owing to similar considerations, the U.S., the original proponent of 'free flow of data' and 'prohibition on data localisation', withdrew from these stances at the WTO. It is difficult to understand how Indian negotiators could be so naive or negligent in agreeing to the above concessions. Digital trade concessions are not like those on commodities, where tariffs can be applied one day and removed on another. Digital trade texts are essentially about rule making for a new global digital order. We either fully opt into western, Big Tech-oriented, digital architectures, or we maintain sufficient autonomy and sovereignty. This is because once the digital rules and systems are set, they are almost impossible to roll back. India's digital concessions are thus buttressing a set of rules for a global digital ecosystem from which India cannot extricate itself later. And India is doing all this in a reactive mode without a clear road map of its own. It seems that the U.K. was able to extract all the above concessions, the absolute opposite to what India has stood for till now, because, unlike manufacturing and agriculture, there is no specific political 'constituency' for digital sovereignty. But it is perhaps an even more important issue in the mid to long term. We may be seeing a repeat of how India lost out on early industrialisation and had to suffer grievous colonial exploitation, causing a loss of wealth and independence. In making these digital concessions, we may be giving up our digital future, independence and prosperity. India must act quickly India needs to develop and negotiate towards a global digital architecture that protects and furthers its digital sovereignty. As a late starter in 'digital industrialisation', it should create the space required for India to become a digital superpower and not a digital colony. For this, India needs to urgently formulate a full-fledged digital sovereignty and 'digital industrialisation' policy which should then inform and guide its trade negotiations. Our negotiators must be accompanied by digital sovereignty experts with access to the top political leadership, which has the core responsibility for safeguarding India's long-term digital interests. These interests are often not so visible, and, therefore, tend to get by-passed and not fought for. Smita Purushottam is India's former Ambassador to Switzerland. Parminder Jeet Singh is a Delhi-based digital society researcher
&w=3840&q=100)
Business Standard
4 hours ago
- Business Standard
Donald Trump's 25% tariff hit triggers layoff warning from exporters
No Russia penalty yet; key meetings between Goyal and exporters on Saturday, Sunday Shine Jacob Shreya Nandi Chennai/New Delhi Listen to This Article US President Donald Trump on Friday formally imposed a sweeping 25 per cent import tariff on Indian goods, sparking fears of mass layoffs among exporters, especially in the textiles sector. Though the anticipated 'penalty' tied to India's purchases from Russia was absent, the tariff hike placed Indian exporters at a disadvantage compared with regional peers such as Bangladesh, which secured a lower 20 per cent rate from Washington. According to a White House executive order, the new tariffs are set to come into effect from August 7 and will be imposed over and above the existing World Trade Organization-compliant tariffs,
