Murali Kallummal

• PhD Economics; M Phil (Industrial Economics)
• Professor at Indian Institute of Foreign Trade

The quality of corporate governance is broadly a function of the domestic legislative architecture; in the present world with GVCs linkages, it is also the function of the international legislative regime. In other words, it is a function of the dominant market with the growing demand. There has been a delta calling for a radical shift from efficie...

Exporters of food products face stringent standards due to the possibility of contaminations and diseases. Standards are complex, varying across countries, time and stage of production. The cost of compliance is, typically, borne by the exporting firm. This paper examines the impact of international food standards on the export behavior of Indian m...

The Report is prepared in order to under the as to how the level of technology (scale) can act as a barrier when the SPS measure was introduced by QUAD countries. We have carried out a detailed analysis of changes in the scale of technology of detection in six countries, in the United States; the European Commission (Group-27); Germany; Japan, Cana...

Over the years, especially since 2012, have faced rejections of its consignments exported to developed countries in agricultural products. Keeping this in mind, the research question explored in this study is, do the SPS-based MRLs hinder the exports of India’s fruits? An analysis of five fruits like Mango, Papaya, Grapes, Orange and Banana across...

Small businesses are increasingly becoming the drivers of the holistic growth of a nation and also contributing to global development across sectors and some regions. Despite these considerations, overall the participation of MSMEs in international trade has remained insignificant and sparse. The primary drivers have been the heterogeneity of the g...

Trade Agreements ideally should be based on a comprehensive analysis of all possible external barriers for entry of a product. In the case of agricultural products, we find the presence of tariff and non-tariff measures (SPS-based MRLs) and other health-related regulations covering both SPS and TBT measures notified by a territory. Transparency of...

On 24 th January 2022, the Chair of AOA announced the need to maintain the good momentum of negotiations and make the best use of the extra time before the next Ministerial Conference begins. In this paper, we examine some of the so-called 'good momentums' and the manner these good momentums are adopted by some members of the WTO. We attempt to tra...

Export restrictions have been widely used by many countries in recent pasts to protect their domestic industries. In this paper, we estimated the short-run and long-run elasticity of the shrimps and tuna exports using the techniques of co-integration and error correction. We have also checked for structural breaks in the data to analyse the impact...

The fall in tariff rates in the last few decades has seen a simultaneous rise in the use of non- tariff barriers. These insidious measures were a direct outcome of lack of transparencies in the SPS and TBT agreements. Further, it has also led to the deepening of the information asymmetry and has rendered trade policies murkier. This chapter attempt...

The paper explores e-commerce related reforms across production re-structuring, trade, FDI, and the regulatory policies needed to enable the South Asian firms to benefit from servicification of the goods trade. The increased automation and digitisation of production across many of the identified sectors in South Asia will re-structure the various m...

The world is facing an unprecedented health crisis in the form of COVID-19, which has had a profound effect on the global economy, trade, and the multilateral trading system. The event has single-handedly led to the adoption of economically challenging and stringent measures by Members, which in turn have led to production and consumption scaling b...

Small businesses are increasingly becoming the drivers of the holistic growth of a nation and also contributing to global development across sectors and some regions. Despite these considerations, overall the participation of MSMEs in international trade has remained insignificant and sparse. The primary drivers have been the heterogeneity of the...

The world is facing an unprecedented health crisis in the form of COVID-19, which has had a profound effect on the global economy, trade, and the multilateral trading system. The event has single-handedly led to the adoption of economically challenging and stringent measures by Members, which in turn have led to production and consumption scaling b...

The WTO's 12 th Ministerial Conference at Geneva has a proposal on MSMEs and it will have far-reaching implications for companies, whether they are part of international trade or not. It is time that industry associations and policymakers pay heed. In principle, the proposal on the table suggests that a large firm with 900 crore turnover and the ot...

The WTO's 12 th Ministerial Conference at Geneva has a proposal on MSMEs and it will have far-reaching implications for companies, whether they are part of international trade or not. It is time that industry associations and policymakers pay heed. In principle, the proposal on the table suggests that a large firm with 900 crore turnover and the ot...

The electronics industry—the hardware core of the digital economy—is strategic for any country because of the rapid expansion in the adoption of digital technologies across sectors. Several policy reforms have been carried out by successive governments to attract FDI and to promote global value chain (GVC) engagement by Indian electronics firms, wi...

Globalisation, liberalisation and privatisation have fundamentally altered and driven international regulations governing cross-border factor movements. Since 1995, much of these transactions in the commercial sphere have been spearheaded by the World Trade Organisation (WTO). By the early 2000s, there was growing discontent among developing countr...

The Gazette notification of the PLI scheme for mobile phone and electronics components categorically states that the eligibility will be benchmarked against “incremental investment and incremental sales of manufactured goods as distinct from traded goods”. However, no definition has been given on what constitutes manufacturing in the context of the...

India and Japan signed the Indo–Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement in 2011 to liberalize and eliminate tariffs. India’s exports increased, but the gains were limited only to fishery products. Non tariff measures (NTM)—sanitary and phytosanitary measures and technical barriers to trade—are applied on each tariff line; India’s bilater...

Abstract There has been a surge in free trade agreements (FTAs), with a total number at the global level touching almost 600 in number. The solid theoretical underpinning is that the FTAs enable faster economic growth and development by creating trade and investment linkages. Compared to the world, the pace of economic growth and development of the...

Several policy reforms carried out by successive Indian governments since the mid-2000s have focused on attracting FDI to promote global value chain (GVC) engagement by Indian electronics firms. The paper examines the nature of GVC participation of foreign-invested Indian electronics firms, based on a critique of existing approaches for assessing G...

2012 at the International trade has been disciplined under the WTO Agreements and one of the Doha Ministerial Mandate was to bring a balance between the reduction/eliminating tariffs and non-tariff measures; thereby enhancing market access. The average ad-valorem equivalent (AVEs) MFN tariff rate has fallen from an average of 34.5% in 1995 to 7% in...

In the area of market access, the WTO regularly co-operates with the World Customs Organization (WCO), this co-operation primarily concerns the classification of goods. The GATT and WTO negotiations have centred on the WCO system of harmonised nomenclature system (HNS). The GATT members have followed it for various rounds of tariff reduction since...

Reflecting on the general experiences of Article 20 of WTO, non-tariff barriers have a major influence on the food processing sector. In recent times, the stark realities of global trade highlight deviations from CODEX standards in the processed food sector. There has been an evolution of product-specific factors and even of core sustainability mea...

India’s FTAs with ASEAN, South Korea and Japan created perverse incentives for the country's domestic manufacturing and innovation ecosystem. The serious adverse impact of these FTAs on domestic electronics manufacturing is a stark reminder of the lessons from development history. These agreements must be reviewed to ensure their coherence with a s...

India is fast losing its rural population by way of migration to semi-urban areas and towns. This is creating social and economic challenges beyond the contemporary policy solutions. These migratory dynamics require a surgical approach to industrialisation or re-industrialisation, which is also a solution to the hollowing-out faced by India. This c...

The deviations to international and national measures (SPS) are mostly domestic measures which need to be addressed domestically; therefore, the solution to eliminate these barriers would have to come from these very respective members. These measures are manifested in the form of increased regulations based on the maximum residual limits (MRLs) of...

The world trade organisation (WTO) has liberalised trade considerably, but there are instances of imbalance and systemic issues persisting although we celebrate two-decade of the existence of this regulatory body. This paper provides insights into how there is a lack of disciplining of WTO compatible non-tariff measures at the multilateral level. I...

The paper brings out the pattern of notification of TBT measures under the WTO. While, using the WTO grouping of countries does put the developing countries, who are usually adopting international standards, as the largest yearly notifier since 2004. The pattern takes a completely different turn when the notifier is mapped to two other well-establi...

It is vital to have current information on the NTMs while tariff negotiations are being carried out to understand the overall market access implications for a country. The facility of having information on a line-by-line basis was first collected and identified by UNCTAD (TRAINS) for purposes of research and related activities. However, this data i...

The Generalised System of Preferences (GSP), instituted in 1971 under the aegis of UNCTAD, has contributed over the years to creating an enabling trading environment by providing tariff reduction or complete elimination for developing countries and the LDCs. The study of GSP imports of the US economy reveals that 177 beneficiary countries import a...

As the world is reeling under the deaths and exponential spread of the COVID pandemic, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) is busy negotiating a free trade deal in electronic medical goods. One of the five proposals made to the WTO's Council for Trade in Goods for combating the pandemic include “removing the impediments to trade in essential product...

After the formation of WTO in 1995, at the second Ministerial Conference in May 1998, ministers, recognising that global electronic commerce was growing and creating new opportunities for trade, adopted the Declaration on Global Electronic Commerce. Para 46 of the Hong Kong Ministerial declaration in 2005 agreed to continue and maintain the current...

Abstract There is a growing debate on the electronic commerce modes of deliveries, the core issue of the two-year moratorium and the extension of similar treatment of all digitisable products. Looking for similarity to Doha Round sectoral proposals, wherein also tariff elimination was at the core of negotiation. Therefore, this working paper seeks...

The Generalised System of Preferences (GSP), instituted in 1971 under the aegis of UNCTAD, has contributed over the years to creating an enabling trading environment by providing tariff reduction or complete elimination for developing countries and the LDCs. The study of GSP imports of the US economy reveals that 177 beneficiary countries import a...

https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/rcep-india-must-protect-its-ict-industry/article29692622.ece#!

Trade Barrier in Developed markets

Developed countries are major importers of agricultural and food products from developing countries. While international trade in agricultural commodities has expanded, there has been growing consciousness by consumers about the quality of imported food products. The WTO members are legally authorized to impose sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS)-base...

The paper brings out the pattern of notification of TBT measures under the WTO. While, using the WTO grouping of countries does put the developing countries, who are usually adopting international standards, as the largest yearly notifier since 2004. The pattern takes a completely different turn when the notifier is mapped to two other well-establi...

DECLARATION This is to certify that the research that forms the basis of this thesis titled "Studying the Impacts of the Montreal Protocol: A Case Study of Manufacturing Firms in India 1 " is an original work carried out by me and has not been submitted anywhere else for the award of any degree. I certify that, to the best of my knowledge, all sour...

This paper analyses India’s exports to, and imports from, the four bilateral partners like Brazil, Russian Federation, China and South Africa (BRCS). The complete analysis carried out for the period 2007 to 2012. At the aggregate level, India had an overall negative trade balance with the BRCS trading partners. Reflected in India’s negative trade b...

The WTO needs to have some semblance of balance between members who are users of price-based measures and those who use the non-price based measures. The Multilateral body should strive to create an environment of effective market access for all countries by disciplining barriers like SPS and TBT measures which often used behind-the-borders. Furthe...

Even as India’s recent manufacturing sector export performance has already been a matter of major policy concern, challenges related to sustaining India’s export growth have increased considerably in the recent past. On the one side, global economic conditions are likely to be less favourable in the coming years for a variety of reasons. Technologi...

It is not the tariff liberalization, but the streamlining of NTMs that is important for achieving preferential market access. Only then, any FTA achieve its true goal of promoting trade and investment. The AIFTA liberalized tariffs across 80 per cent of AIFTA tariff lines. However, there was no clear measure to discipline NTMs. By stating that the...

This paper analyses India’s exports to, and imports from, the four bilateral partners namely: Brazil, Russian Federation, China and South Africa (BRCS). The analysis also looks at the trade deficit/surplus with each bilateral partner separately for the period 2007 to 2012. The trade flow have been analysed in this paper according to the UNCTAD clas...

This article examines one of the major systemic issues in the process of negotiation under the Doha Round of the World Trade Organization (WTO): the tariff lines with non-ad-valorem (NAV) duties in agricultural and allied products (A&AP) and further the process of ad-valorem equivalent (AVEs) calculations. By analyzing the trade policy instruments...

The difference between protection and protectionism is very thin and tricky. WTO members have the right to take measures to protect human, animal and plant life or health. However, the measures have to conform to international standards. If the measures deviate from international standards, these must be backed by sufficient scientific evidence or...

The present study tries to analyses the export performance of India under three different lists (OECD, APEC and WTO) of Environmental Goods (EGs). This study is done primarily to understand of the three lists which one is best for India to in terms of Trade. Secondly, an attempt is made to find out which list is most suitable for the purposes of ne...

The ASEAN–India Free Trade Agreement (FTA) has brought opportunities as well as challenges to the Indian industry since it came into force on 1 January 2010. There is no clear-cut estimates about the gains which will come to India especially in the sectors of agriculture, plantation and fisheries. However, some of the sectors which are labour inten...

This article is an attempt to analyze the need for negotiations (if any) for India, in the sector of 'Enhanced Healthcare' which is one of the 14 sectors in the Sectoral Negotiations (a component of Non Agricultural Market Access) of the ongoing Doha round. This is done by looking at various components of the Doha Round Sectoral Proposals specifica...

This article is an attempt to analyze the need for negotiations (if any) for India, in the sector of ‘Enhanced Healthcare’ which is one of the 14 sectors in the Sectoral Negotiations (a component of Non Agricultural Market Access) of the ongoing Doha round. This is done by looking at various components of the Doha Round Sectoral Proposals specifica...

India's recent overlapping comprehensive trade agreements, which combine accelerated goods trade liberalisation with deeper and wider liberalisation in agriculture, "investment" and services, have wide ramifications on her development despite the extent of liberalisation that the country has undertaken over the last two decades. It is argued that t...

The paper is a study to examine the impact of Uzhavar Sandhai on farmers' standards of living. It also gives some insightful policy suggestions.

To complete the chain of linkages between financial liberalisation and the crisis in developing country agricultural sectors, we have to go beyond the impact of domestic deregulation of the financial sector, and consider the impact of financial liberalisation in the context of both the macroeconomic interactions, as well as the changed dynamics of...

It is very important to have current information on the NTMs while tariff negotiations are being carried out to understand the overall market access implications for a country. The facility of having information on line-by-line basis was first collected and identified by UNCTAD (TRAINS) for purposes of research and related activities. However this...

This is a summary of the country positions taken by the various member of the WTO with regard to TRIMs; it covers a long period of 1995 to 2003. In the Cancun Ministerial investment with two of other Singapore Issues were dropped, due to lack of consensus. In the recent year the TRIMs related issues are increasingly becoming a part of the various t...

Providing an overview of the trends towards global harmonisation of economic policies, this paper argues that the challenges faced by developing countries in addressing their local developmental concerns call for sub-federal governance structures and strategic re-engineering of federal finances.

Globalisation and liberalisation have brought in additional challenges to governments across the globe. These new challenges mainly arise from the increased role of the private sector in the developmental activities on the one hand, and on the other hand, owing to the withdrawal of governmental activities (intermediation without having an oversight...

This paper argues that the recent bilateral free trade initiatives of ASEAN members and, in particular, the ASEAN-China free trade agreement (ACFTA), are driven by ASEAN's desire to maintain its export growth based on the regional production networks promoted by multinational corporations. The paper undertakes an empirical analysis of ASEAN-China b...

Since 1947 when the was a concerted effort by global players formalise a world order of commercial trade, we have seen two closely related bodies the GATT and the WTO – with an expanded coverage and penalising legal recourse on the violator in the later. One of the fundamental principles of the WTO is the creation of a predictable and liberal world...