The United States, in a recent filing to the WTO, stated that India has paid out far more in cotton subsidies than the World Trade Organization allowed, with payments “vastly in excess” of what it had officially declared. The filing is the latest in a series of analyses of publicly available data that Washington has submitted to the WTO, each one setting out apparent breaches of WTO rules that are hiding in plain sight. Previous submissions have targeted China and Vietnam as well as India.
According to the U.S. assessment of India’s market price support (MPS) for cotton, New Delhi was allowed to pay out up to 10 per cent of the value of production, but the actual figure had ranged from 53 percent to 81 per cent since 2010. For the 2015/16 marketing year, India had notified market price support of $18 million, which was about Rs 1.2 billion, but the United States estimated that the correct figure to be around Rs 504 billion.
In 2016/17, India had not notified any MPS, but the United States calculated the correct value to be around Rs 557 billion.
