Developing countries raise concerns over WTO Secretariat’s work on plurilateral tals on e-commerce

India, South Africa, and several other developing and least-developed countries have raised a red flag at the World Trade Organization (WTO), over the Secretariat’s controversial role in advancing work on the plurilateral initiatives while ignoring multilateral work on unresolved mandated issues of the Doha work programme. India’s trade envoy, Ambassador J S Deepak, allegedly said that ‘the primary role of the WTO Secretariat is to support and strengthen the multilateral track’. He urged ‘the Secretariat to accord priority to the work of the regular bodies and negotiating groups over the Joint Statement Groups that were only informal groupings.’ These groups were informally launched on electronic commerce, domestic regulation for services, investment facilitation, disciplines for micro, small, and medium sized enterprises, and the economic empowerment of women.