New Delhi [India]: Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal on Thursday said the World Trade Organization (WTO) needs to reassess the way it has been conducting its affairs, informed the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. The minister said the developed countries should do more and meet their obligations such as providing clean and green technology to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Climate goals and meet the needs of billions of people. “The world should be open to a discussion on which countries should be considered developing and which should now be considered developed,” Goyal said as per the Ministry of Commerce & Industry. Deprive countries of certain differentiated treatment in their business practices when they are at levels of USD 600-3000 per capita income and putting them on the same benchmark as a country that makes USD 60,000 or USD 80,000 per capita is grossly unfair, he said. “The most powerful countries in the world today are concerned about the growing dominance of non-transparent and non-market economies and, therefore, are looking to engage with India because in their own ecosystem they are not preparing as many STEM graduates as a country like India does,” the minister said. Stating that the world is looking at India’s contribution to Innovation and Sustainability, Goyal said, “India is a land of disruptive ideas and our industries will play a critical role in growing our global footprint as we undertake bold reforms for achieving aggressive targets.” “The Government should have no role in running businesses, rather it should act as a facilitator,” he said. The minister said, “Prime Minister Narendra Modi has over the last seven years focussed a lot on getting businesses to be run by business persons and government to act more as a facilitator and we hope to be able to take that forward in a much bigger way.” Goyal said PM Modi had assured at the G20 Summit that India will manufacture five billion vaccines during the next year to make the world a safer place. The world’s first DNA vaccine is coming out of India, the world’s first nasal vaccine, we will soon have an RNA vaccine that will match the best in the world, in fact, be better than the best in the world, he said. “It won’t need minus 60-70 degrees temperature to store that vaccine, it can be done between minus 2-10 degrees. Look at the huge impact it will have in the logistics chain and the ability to deliver that worldwide at affordable prices in a very cost-competitive manner,” he added. The contribution that India is proposing to make in the next few months completely overrides the contribution of any other country or any other region when it comes to truly make vaccines available to every nook and corner of the globe, particularly the less developed countries and the developing countries, the minister said.
