Coping with SPS Challenges in India: WTO and Beyond

Abstract

The Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPSA) was negotiated with a view to setting in place an array of multilateral rules that would, on the one hand, recognize the legitimate right of WTO Members to adopt sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures necessary to protect human, animal, or plant life or health, and on the other, enshrine certain checks and balances to cope with the possibility of these measures emerging as non-tariff barriers (NTBs). However, the experiences of developing countries including India with SPS requirements imposed particularly by the developed countries bear testimony to the fact that SPSA has thus far proved rather ineffective in living up to the latter objective. This is largely attributable to the fact that, its dual objective notwithstanding, SPSA has left considerable ‘space’ for WTO Members to use SPS measures for protectionist purposes under the guise of their ‘legitimate’ concerns. This ‘space’ seems to have been further reinforced by the mode of interpretation of SPSA by the WTO Dispute Settlement System. Written against this backdrop, the present article brings to the fore some of the key SPS challenges facing the developing countries by taking India as a case in point and explores certain plausible strategies to cope with such challenges in an effective manner.