India takes on the US’s accusation of MPS mismatch at WTO; counters the complaint as baseless

In a counter move to defend its stand on the farm subsidies India takes on the US accusation of MPS mismatch at WTO. According to reports, a complaint lodged by the U.S. at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) against India’s farm subsidies states that India has substantially under-reported its market price support (MPS) for wheat and rice.

India counters the plaint, which was submitted on on May 4, by calling it baseless. Indian diplomatic circles stated that the U.S. calculations were based on wrong assumptions. They added that India would officially respond at the WTO’s Committee on Agriculture meeting in June.

In its 12-page document submitted to the WTO, the U.S. laid out its calculations of the value of India’s MPS programme for the four years between 2010-11 and 2013-14 using publicly available data.“India’s apparent MPS for wheat appears to have been over 60% of the value of production in each of the last four years for which India has notified data,” said the document.

“Its apparent MPS for rice appears to have been over 70% of the value of production in each of the years,” it added. According to the U.S. calculations, the value of India’s MPS for rice that year was more than Rs. 1.7 lakh crore, which would be 76.9% of the total value of production.

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