The late comment on India's veto on Trade Facilitation Agreement
India declined to sign the Trade facilitation agreement (TFA) on the ground that there has been no progress on the issue of public stockholding for food security purposes. TFA would facilitate trade by adopting better and common customs procedures for trade facilitation. This would ease the hassles in cross border movement of goods. India needs easing of customs procedures given that we rank 132nd in ease of trading across borders as per world bank's doing business report. The official explanation given to the parliament by the Commerce minister on the stand taken by India, is here . It's an interesting read as it appears that we stood on behalf of developing countries, which includes the least developed countries, the so called LDCs, and all the poor of the world. That would mean that we must have been supported by them at the WTO. I checked up. It was not so. We had three supporters on this matter. Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia. And if a country is known by the com...