Monday, March 31, 2014: It seems that India’s Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM) has been a pinching itch for the Obama administration. US has been on a constant struggle to disarm the solar initiative in India by way of making its business houses a local name here. Now, US has reportedly told India that it should to prefer American manufacturers to cater all domestic supply demands.
US approached the World Trade Organization (WTO) with its second complaint against the second phase of the JNNSM, earlier this year. The complaint alleged India of discrimination against US manufacturers by adding the domestic content requirement (DCR) category. The complaint also added that this term faulted against WTO norms, as well.
According to Reuters, “New Delhi is furious about a threat of trade sanctions made by the USTR office over its protection of intellectual property rights (IPR), preference for domestic producers and non-trade barriers.” As per various reports, a US Trade Representative had accused that India did not show any regard to US and continued to implement the JNNSM policies.
As reported earlier, the two nations met to understand and rationally reach a conclusion over the JNNSM policies and its future business with US. The scrutiny talks have been reported to have failed. The India-US solar talks were in response to WTO complaint, which referred that the two countries should hold direct talks and reach a settlement outside WTO.
The WTO hearing is scheduled on 11 April. If India and US do not reach a consensus till then, it is likely that WTO may take some strict actions in any direction. US has strongly projected that India should focus on extending US businesses in its solar mission. It expects DCR category to come with a special exception for the same.
India argues that the WTO norms do not fit the JNNSM policies, since the power generated from DCR projects will be directly bought by the government. Thus, these projects come under government procurement.
