Sinister Subsidies

I attended an excellent presentation on WTO conducted by Mr. Shishir Priyadarshi, former officer of the IAS and presently a Director in WTO. He presented us some very interesting perspectives.

For all the hype about India being over protectionist in the WTO negotiations, consider the following facts:

India's agriculture subsidies averages about 4% of the value of the agriculture goods produced. The comparable percentages for US, EC and Japan ranges about 80%.

US provided agriculture subsidies worth $ 22 Bn last year. 90% of this amount went to 10% of the farmers in US (Because subsidies are given based on the land holdings. Hence, obviously these subsidies reached the richest of the US farmers. It should be noted here that rich farmers in US are a powerful lobby and they contributed about $ 11.5 million during last election towards campaign contributions).

In UK the largest recipient of the agriculture subsidies is THE QUEEN

In Switzerland, a farmer gets an average $ 1600 per year for every cow he owns. (Incidentally, this is more than the per capita income of two thirds of the nations in the world)

In Norway, farmers get subsidies for the hedges they maintain in the rural areas (Optical soothing)

The import tariffs for rice is Japan is more than 1000%.

In Rajnikanth style.... the rich get richer and the poor get poorer...