Fair Trade

21.03.2007 The new free trade agreements being signed up between rich and poor countries are proving far more damaging to the poor than anything envisaged within WTO talks, Oxfam said in a report

24.02.2007 Human history is rich in impassioned but strange advocacies in the name of the poor. Here’s one example. An anti-cancer drug patented and marketed by an MNC costs around $ 2600 per patient per month. The generic version manufactured in India costs around $ 200 per patient per month. The generic version is cheaper.Does it makes difference to India's poor whether the patented or the generic version is in the market.Saubhik Chakrabarti express this view in an interview.

23.02.2007 Novartis AG had filed a batch of petitions challenging the order of rejection of its patent application for beta crystalline form of imatinib mesylate and section 3 (d) of the Act as amended by the Patents (Amendment) Act. Additional Solicitor-General, V.T. Gopalan,told the Madras High Court the amended Section 3 (d) of the Patents Act and the explanation were valid.

23.02.2007 The Left parties and experts demanded the scrapping of the Mashelkar committee report on patents, and asked the Government to reject any proposal from its members to rewrite the "plagiarised" and "pro-multinational corporation" paper.

31.01.2007 The United States has asked Bangladesh to re-examine the possibility of restarting negotiations on the Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) between the two countries.

29.01.2007 Developing countries led by Indonesia, India, and China issued a strong message to the World Economic Forum under way here that they will not allow attempts to dilute the agricultural negotiations in the Doha Round of trade talks by certain industrialised countries, especially the United States.

29.11.2006 Trade between India and Pakistan can increase to a phenomenal level of 6.6 billion dollars if barriers are removed and the neighbouring country implements the South Asia Free Trade Area (SAFTA) agreement, an ICRIER report has said.

04.08.2006 Civil society activists, who early on foretold the inevitable collapse of the Doha Round, are now predicting the beginning of the end for the World Trade Organisation (WTO) itself, which sponsored the failed negotiations.

25.07.2006 Even as the global trade talks collapsed in Geneva, India has blamed developed countries for not making substantial cuts in trade-distorting farm subsidies. The Doha development round of the World Trade Organisation now looks set to be suspended for the next few months.

04.07.2006 As trade liberalisation negotiations head into the make-or-break stage, the World Trade Organisation has stepped up pressure to establish concrete numbers for concessions -- a none-too-small task given criticisms against the industrialised North's "self interest", and growing divisions among developing countries.

12.06.2006 Rich countries led by the United States have cheated the developing countries under the garb of the Doha Development Round of WTO.This was stated by head of the trade justice campaign, Actionaid Pakistan, Mustafa Talpur at a press conference.

22.05.2006 The adverse effects of unfair rules of global trade have made it imperative for national governments to have enough sovereign rights for policy formulations to deal with the situation. It is unfortunate that this policy space of national governments is gradually shrinking, with unfair trade rules in vogue.

20.04.2006 Developing countries - India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka - will lower customs duty by 40 per cent in 2006 for the products originating from the least developed countries -? Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal and the Maldives - under the South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA) agreement

18.04.2006 The World Trade Organisation (WTO) report on trends in trade in 2005 and prospects in 2006 highlights the weak spots in terms of economic growth. According to WTO economists, growth in global trade has, in the past decade, been consistently double the growth in the global economy.

04.04.2006 The launch of the Doha Round in November 2001 was a milestone in itself, as a large number of developing countries were initially not in favour of a new round. They felt that the Uruguay Round had been unfair to them, and wanted their grievances to be addressed before a new round was launched.

03.04.2006 The director general knows the ground realities for certain. Despite this, he is making a frantic bid to make the parties come to an agreed conclusion. He will be on a tour to India, this week on April 5-6. This, time he wants to hold discussions with all stakeholders in India.

29.03.2006 Ending weeks of suspense, Pakistan announced that it would extend the South Asian Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA), to be operationalised from July 1, 2006, to India.

28.03.2006 The Pakistan-India Joint Study Group (JSG) on decided to ink a Mutual Recognition Agreement (MRA) to facilitate bilateral trade.Under the agreement, both countries will accept each other’s laboratory reports on industrial goods as well as agricultural products. They will also accept the findings and reports on technical issues for resolving bilateral trade issues.

27.03.2006 The fight on pruning industrial tariffs at the World Trade Organisation has become more fierce with a group of developing countries (Nama-11), including India, demanding that developed countries should respect the principles of less than full reciprocity and special & differential treatment and make greater cuts than developing countries.

27.03.2006 The third round of talks between India and Pakistan on economic and commercial cooperation begins. There is uncertainty over whether Pakistan is ready to extend the South Asia Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA) to India.