WTO and India: Multilateral Trade, MC13 Outcomes and Reform

WTO and India have an entwined history that begins not in 1995 but in 1947, when India was a founding contracting party to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. The World Trade Organization was established on 1 January 1995 as a successor to GATT at the conclusion of the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations, on the basis of the Marrakesh Agreement signed in April 1994. India has been a founding member of the WTO from day one, and is one of the most active and influential developing-country voices in the organisation. The WTO today has 164 members, accounting for more than 98 per cent of world trade.

The relationship between the WTO and India has passed through three phases — the building-up of the multilateral trading system in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the long stalemate over the Doha Development Agenda from 2001 onwards, and the current phase of stress and selective reform, marked by the paralysis of the Appellate Body, the persistence of the e-commerce moratorium debate, contested outcomes on agriculture, and a sharpening of India’s defensive negotiating posture in the run-up to and beyond the 13th Ministerial Conference (MC13) in Abu Dhabi in February–March 2024.

From GATT to WTO

The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade was concluded in 1947 with 23 contracting parties, India among them. GATT 1947 was a provisional agreement, applied through the Protocol of Provisional Application. Over eight rounds of negotiations — culminating in the Uruguay Round from 1986 to 1994 — GATT progressively lowered tariffs and expanded coverage to non-tariff measures and services. The Marrakesh Agreement of 15 April 1994 established the WTO as a permanent institution to administer the trade rules, including GATT 1994, the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA), the Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS), the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures and several others.

Structure and Decision-Making

The Ministerial Conference is the WTO’s highest body and meets once every two years. The General Council, based in Geneva, oversees the system between conferences and meets in three further capacities — as the Trade Policy Review Body and the Dispute Settlement Body. Beneath are the Goods, Services, TRIPS, Trade and Development and Trade and Environment Councils, plus committees and working parties. Decisions are taken by consensus.

India as a Founding Member

India ratified the Marrakesh Agreement and became a founding member of the WTO on 1 January 1995. From the outset, India has positioned itself as a leading voice for special and differential treatment for developing countries, food security, the protection of small farmers and the priority of the Doha Development Agenda.

Doha Development Agenda

The Doha Round of trade negotiations was launched at the fourth Ministerial Conference in Doha in November 2001. It was framed as a development round, aimed at correcting imbalances in the Uruguay Round in favour of developing countries — particularly in agriculture, services and special and differential treatment. Negotiations stalled repeatedly through the 2000s on agricultural subsidies in developed countries, market access in non-agricultural products (NAMA) and services liberalisation. By the time of the Bali Ministerial in December 2013, the Doha Round was effectively in suspended animation.

Bali, Nairobi, Buenos Aires

The 9th Ministerial Conference in Bali in 2013 produced the Bali Package — a Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA), a peace clause on agricultural public stockholding, and decisions on least-developed countries.

Peace Clause on Public Stockholding

India’s negotiating position at Bali was driven by the National Food Security Act, 2013, which expanded grain procurement at minimum support prices for distribution under the public distribution system. The Agreement on Agriculture caps trade-distorting domestic support, and India’s expanded MSP operations risked exceeding the de minimis ceiling for developing countries. India insisted on a permanent solution allowing public stockholding for food security purposes outside the AoA’s amber-box discipline. The Bali Ministerial agreed an interim peace clause exempting public stockholding programmes from challenge for an interim period. At the Nairobi Ministerial in 2015 and again at MC11 in Buenos Aires in 2017 and MC12 in Geneva in 2022, the peace clause was reaffirmed and extended. A permanent solution remains pending and is at the centre of India’s WTO agenda.

Trade Facilitation Agreement

The TFA was the first multilateral agreement concluded under the WTO. It entered into force on 22 February 2017 after the requisite two-thirds of WTO members ratified it. India ratified the TFA in April 2016. The agreement standardises customs procedures, transit, advance rulings and risk management; India has implemented most of its TFA obligations through its National Trade Facilitation Action Plans.

MC12 (Geneva, 2022) and MC13 (Abu Dhabi, 2024)

The 12th Ministerial Conference in Geneva in June 2022 — the first since the COVID-19 pandemic — produced an outcomes package that included a partial waiver on TRIPS for COVID-19 vaccines, a fisheries subsidies agreement prohibiting subsidies for IUU (illegal, unreported, unregulated) fishing and fishing on overfished stocks, and a renewed e-commerce moratorium.

Fisheries Subsidies

The first part of the Fisheries Subsidies Agreement, adopted at MC12, is the first WTO agreement explicitly targeted at environmental sustainability. It prohibits subsidies for IUU fishing, fishing on overfished stocks, and fishing on the unregulated high seas. Negotiations on a second wave to discipline subsidies that contribute to overcapacity and overfishing have continued. India’s position has been that any disciplines must respect the principle of common but differentiated responsibility, accommodate the livelihood needs of small-scale and artisanal fishers, and provide longer transition periods for developing countries.

MC13 Abu Dhabi

The 13th Ministerial Conference was held in Abu Dhabi from 26 February to 2 March 2024. MC13 admitted Comoros and Timor-Leste as new members, taking the total to 166 in the process of ratification. The conference adopted a Ministerial Declaration but failed to deliver on several headline items. The second wave of fisheries subsidies disciplines was not concluded, primarily because of unresolved gaps on overcapacity and overfishing. The permanent solution on public stockholding remained elusive, with India and the G33 group of developing countries holding their negotiating position. Agreement on a Ministerial Decision on Agriculture more broadly was not reached. The e-commerce moratorium was extended one further time, with members agreeing that it would expire at MC14 or by 31 March 2026, whichever is earlier.

E-Commerce Moratorium

The WTO moratorium on customs duties on electronic transmissions was first adopted at the second Ministerial in Geneva in 1998. It has been renewed at every conference since, but with growing resistance. India, joined by South Africa and Indonesia, has argued that with the volume of cross-border digital trade now very large, a permanent moratorium foregoes significant tariff revenue, locks in market access for digital goods without reciprocal disciplines, and constrains policy space on data and digital industrial policy. India’s preference is for an expiry of the moratorium rather than a permanent extension, and for substantive work on classification, scope and impact before any renewal.

The Appellate Body Crisis

The WTO Dispute Settlement Understanding is the most-developed dispute mechanism in international trade. Panels rule on disputes; the Appellate Body provides binding appellate review. From 2017, the United States blocked the appointment and reappointment of Appellate Body members, citing concerns about judicial overreach and overlong proceedings. By December 2019, the Appellate Body had fewer than the minimum three members required to hear appeals, and ceased to function. Members are appealing into the void — appeals that cannot be heard because there is no functioning Appellate Body.

A group of WTO members has set up the Multi-Party Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement (MPIA) under Article 25 of the DSU as a temporary substitute. India has not joined the MPIA, taking the position that the priority is the full restoration of the two-tier dispute settlement system. MC13 agreed to continue work on dispute settlement reform with the aim of restoring a fully and well-functioning system accessible to all members by 2024 — a deadline that has now slipped.

India’s WTO Stance

India’s WTO posture has six recurring themes. First, defence of the Doha Development Agenda, including a permanent solution on public stockholding. Second, special and differential treatment as a non-negotiable principle of the multilateral system. Third, scepticism of new issues — investment facilitation, e-commerce rules, gender — being negotiated as joint statement initiatives among subsets of members, on the grounds that they erode multilateralism. Fourth, restoration of the two-tier dispute settlement system. Fifth, an active TRIPS-flexibility agenda, including the COVID-19 TRIPS waiver, and a sharper position on technology transfer. Sixth, an integrated trade-policy posture that combines selective bilateral and plurilateral engagement — with the UAE, Australia, EFTA, and a long-pending agreement with the European Union — with the multilateral track.

The WTO and India relationship operates alongside, but separately from, India’s regional trade engagement through frameworks such as ASEAN and India, BIMSTEC and SAARC and India, and complements its Indo-Pacific economic posture as seen through the Quad, India’s Indo-Pacific strategy and discussions at the SCO Summit 2025.

Outlook

The WTO is in a phase of contested reform. Three challenges define the next few years — restoring the dispute settlement system, concluding the second wave of fisheries subsidies disciplines and finding a permanent solution on agricultural public stockholding, and handling the proliferation of joint statement initiatives outside the consensus framework. India will continue to push for development-oriented outcomes within a strict multilateral discipline. The 14th Ministerial Conference, expected to be hosted by Cameroon, will be the next test of whether the multilateral trading system can deliver substantive outcomes or whether plurilateral and bilateral pathways will continue to displace it.

Frequently Asked Questions