AUSTRALIA'S PROPOSAL FOR IMPROVING THE INFORMATION ON NOTIFICATIONS CONTAINED IN THE ANNUAL REPORTS OF THE WTO COMMITTEE ON SAFEGUARDS

Questions Posed By the United States
TO INDIA

The following communication, dated 7 December 2016, is being circulated at the request of the Delegation of the United States.

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Prior to the April 2016 meeting of the WTO Committee on Safeguards (Committee), the Secretariat circulated a room document^[1] detailing a proposal put forth by Australia.^[2] Australia's proposal, as understood by the United States, is to have the Secretariat add a date to the Committee's annual report that reflects the date of the notifications for actions currently included in Annex 2 of the annual report. Inclusion of such a date would provide additional transparency to the information in the annual report and would not impose any additional burden on parties as the date would simply come from the already-made notification. Australia recapped its proposal at both the April and October 2016 meetings, and received support for moving forward from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, Chinese Taipei, European Union, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Norway, Singapore, Switzerland, and the United States.^[3] India was the only Member to express reservations to Australia's proposal. At the April 2016 Committee meeting, India stated that certain things were unclear in Australia's proposal and wished to consult bilaterally. At the October 2016 Committee meeting, India stated that the proposal was still being considered in capital, without much further explanation.

Based on this understanding, we pose the following questions to India:

Question 1

Given that Australia's proposal was initially presented at the October 2015 Committee meeting, could India please explain why it is taking more than one year to consider a proposal that calls for inserting notification dates into the annual report when that information is already publicly available in the notification itself?

Question 2

Please explain the concerns, if any, that India has with the proposal and indicate how to modify the proposal in a way that alleviates those concerns while providing comparable levels of transparency.

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