India seeks emergency meeting of WTO's General Council in Geneva over COVID package

India has sought an emergency meeting of the General Council of the World Trade Organization (WTO) this month in Geneva over COVID Packages. The meeting will deliberate upon the world trade bodies' proposed response package, including patent waiver proposal in order to deal with the pandemic amid rising coronavirus infections globally, according to an official.

"We have sought an emergency meeting of the General Council to discuss the WTO's response package to deal with COVID-19 pandemic including patent waiver proposal. WTO will start its meetings from January 10 and we have suggested convening the meeting immediately," the official told PTI.

India also expressed disappointment over no progress on TRIPs (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) waiver proposal to deal with the pandemic and has called for including this proposal into WTO's proposed response package, the official added. 

Suggesting a waiver for all WTO members on the implementation of certain provisions of the TRIPs agreement, India and South Africa submitted the first proposal in October 2020. This agreement was in relation to the prevention, containment or treatment of COVID-19. However, a revised proposal was submitted in May 2021.

TRIPs is a multilateral agreement on intellectual property (IP) rights such as copyright, industrial designs, patents and protection of undisclosed information or trade secrets that came into effect in January 1995. 

WTO warns Omicron likely to affect world economy

In December 2021, WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala warned that the Omicron variant of the coronavirus will hamper global economic recovery unless the issue of unequal access to vaccines is addressed. She further went on to say that if significant efforts are not made to fix the problem, challenges will continue to arise that will pose a major threat to a long-term recovery of the global economy. 

The General Council is WTO's highest decision-making body in Geneva that meets regularly to carry out the functions of WTO. It has representatives (usually ambassadors or equivalent) from all member governments and has the authority to act on behalf of the ministerial conference which only meets about every two years. WTO is a 164-member multilateral body which formulates rules for global exports and imports, and adjudicates disputes between two or more than two countries on trade-related issues.

(With inputs from PTI)