WTO Examines India Textile And Garment Enterprises To Provide Export Subsidies

The US trade protectionism trend is rising again. The United States asks the World Trade Organization (WTO) to examine whether India can be right.

The United States recently submitted a document to the WTO Committee on subsidies and countervailing measures (SCM), saying that the United States has reason to believe that certain products in India already have the export competitiveness defined by the SCM agreement.

The agreement stipulates that the members of developing countries (per capita income of less than $000) are not subject to the prohibition of export subsidies, as long as exports of certain products are less than 3.25% of world trade for two consecutive years.

The documents submitted by the United States require the Secretariat (WTO) to export India's textiles and clothing according to Article 27.6 of the SCM agreement.

According to a government official, because most of the subsidies provided by the central government to exporters are short term subsidies, the US threat to India's exports is very small.

Now that things are at an early stage, he said, "we will continue to pay attention to how things develop."

Calculations show that in 2008, India exported 21 billion US dollars of textiles and clothing, accounting for 3.4% of Global trade's US $612 billion.

But in 2009, India textile exports to the European Union and the United States (plus more than half of India's textile and clothing exports).