India for implementation of Bali package, says Arvind Panagaria

Antalya: The Sherpa for G20 Summit, Arvind Panagaria, on Monday said India made all efforts to ensure that the Bali package, including those on agriculture, development, public stock holding and ratification of the trade facilitation agreement, is implemented.

"We have the COP - 21 starting on November 30 for climate issues and regarding the trade issue we will have a conference in Nairobi. So, both are our more contentious issues," said Panagaria.

"Our efforts were made to ensure that increased efforts will be made to implement the Bali package including those on agriculture, development, public stock holding and ratification of the trade facilitation agreement," he added.

Panagaria pointed out that the most important issue was climate change.

"This really held us up and discussions are still on we are trying to iron out the last bit of difference remaining. Our position here was principally that what we do be within the context of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the principles of UNFCCC be adhered to," Panagaria said.

"That was one of the key things that we pushed. Equity issues of Common but Differentiated Responsibility (CBDR) was our major push. Other G20 members were very keen that 2 degree centigrade goal also be included in the communique," he added.

Panagaria said on development issues, there has been a discussion on transmission costs of remittances.

"India is the largest recipient of remittances from abroad and a lot of poor families actually live on those remittances. So, the transaction costs can be a huge burden for them. So, India has been pushing that these transaction costs be reduced. It used to be a 10 percent has now come down to 7.5 percent on an average. India has been pushing to bringing it down to three percent," said Panagaria.

"In the G20, the agreement was till now for up to about five percent, the goal has been five percent. We pushed that according to the SDGs the remittance cost be brought down to 3 percent by 2030," he added.

Panagaria further said India also pushed that there must be a general effort to align the G20 with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

"In particular, we were keen because the Prime Minister was the key member to adopt poverty alleviation by 2030 as part of the SDGs," he added.

The Sherpa for G20 Summit said there was a lot of push from the United States on energy.

"They wanted the adoption of 2025 as the date of adoption of the elimination of fossil fuel subsidies. We were opposed to that. So, we fought against it," he added.

Panagaria said the fifth area on the communique is employment and labour.

"Here there was general support for adopting the goal of reducing the share of young people who are most at risk of being permanently left behind in the labour market by 15 percent by 2025," Panagaria said.

"Sixth is the cyber security. This was an issue brought at a later stage by the United States and India has clearly expressed keen interest and like many countries we are also vulnerable to cyber attacks so we generally supported that," he added.