Discussing food security with the WTO

What is public stockholding? Public stockholding is a policy tool used by governments to procure, stockpile and distribute food when needed. One example could be MSP. Sounds familiar now? Minimum Support Price is a scheme where the government purchases at prices higher than the market price and in that way subsidizing the farmers. 

The Union Minister of Commerce, Piyush Goyal held discussions with the Director-General WTO, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala for a solution to public stockholding for food security at the G33 (group of 47 developing and least developed countries) meeting. Protection of India's food grain procurement programme at MSP is under negotiation at the WTO.

The G33 has called for an amendment in the Agreement on Agriculture of the WTO because the current rules suggest a fixed subsidy of 10% for food procurement from farmers to feed the poor. The existing rule also uses an old methodology for subsidy calculation that does not account for inflation and is based on a price index of 1986-88. The grouping has submitted a proposal that suggests that such public stockholding programmes would be exempt  from subsidy reduction commitments.