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.
_______________
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.
__________
[1] RD/SG/14 (dated 7 March 2016).
[2] This proposal was initially presented at the October 2015 Committee
meeting, followed by informal consultations held by the Chair on 11 April 2016
to discuss the proposal in more detail.
[3] See G/SG/M/49 (dated 12 August 2016) and G/SG/142 (dated 27 October
2016).