WTO Agreement on Agriculture and South Asia’s Farm Trade

This study seeks to examine the impact of the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) of the World Trade Organization (WTO) on the balance of agricultural trade of South Asian countries (SAC). The evidence suggests that AoA has failed to boost the SAC farm trade surplus. SAC, as a whole, are net losers in new trade regime. Further, analysis indicates that under the WTO regime, openness of Indian, Sri Lankan and Bangladeshi agriculture has increased. In sharp contrast, Pakistan’s agricultural economy has been gradually closed up. The need of SAC is to designate their food items as special products and to create an effective and proactive special safeguard mechanism for safeguarding their food security base, in order to shield the livelihood of millions of resource poor farmers from frequent farm imports surges.