Siam concerned over WTO clauses

Says cross-nation trade in used vehicles should not be encouraged

NEW DELHI: Top automotive industry bodies on Thursday wrote to the government expressing concerns over several clauses in the World Trade Organisation’s revised Non-Agriculture Market Access (Nama) draft modalities text.

The Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (Siam) has raised several concerns, including its opposition to any kind of sectoral agreement in the automotive sector with respect to tariff elimination.
It has also warned against selective automotive non-tariff barriers besides any proposal to allow free trade of “remanufactured goods”.
In a strongly worded letter to the government, Siam has cited product flow of remanufactured?refurbished vehicles from developed countries to poor developing countries instead of the other way around.

“Trade in used vehicle, under any name, is essentially trans-boundary movement of waste of a country and governments should not encourage trade of such vehicles. As such, countries should be free to decide how they want to treat different types of used products and not to be forced through WTO mandate and such products should not be treated as new under any circumstances,” it said.

The Automotive Component Manufacturers Association (ACMA) said, “The proposal on sectoral initiatives for elimination of tariffs in specific sectors is in complete breach of the mandate that these initiatives are merely a supplementary and non-mandatory modality.”

b_sindhu@dnaindia.net