By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, OCT 12, 2021: UNION Minister of Commerce & Industry, Piyush Goyal, has called for waiver of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and dismantling new trade barriers in the global fight against the COVID19 pandemic.

"Our response to the pandemic needs to ensure equitable access to vaccines and other COVID-19 related health products by ensuring quick resolution of the supply side constraints. One of the ways to demonstrate this is by accepting the TRIPS waiver proposal," Goyal said, in his address to the G20 Trade and Investment Ministerial Meeting in Naples, Italy today.

Goyal called for actively resolving new trade barriers like vaccine differentiations or COVID passports, which impose mobility restrictions and impede the movement of personnel needed for delivering critical services.

"COVID-19 crisis is a powerful reminder of our inter-connectedness, and the need for a coordinated global strategy to overcome such an unprecedented public health situation," he said.

Goyal underlined the need for an early universal vaccination against Covid19.

Calling for an equitable and balanced outcome to the trade negotiations in the Fisheries sector, Goyal advocated that countries engaged in distant water fishing should stop subsidizing their fishing in high seas and gradually reduce their fishing capacities, particularly, for overfished stocks.

"To achieve balanced outcomes in Fisheries Subsidies, policy space for future is a must, not only to protect the livelihoods of poor and marginal fishermen and address, the food security concerns but also to diversify, modernise and develop the fisheries sector, he said. Separately, Goyal also discussed the Agreement on joint multilateral positions in Fisheries etc with his Australian counterpart during a one-to-one meeting yesterday.