India has urged the world leaders that any action on Climate Change should be within the context of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Addressing newspersons on the sidelines of the G20 Summit at Antalya in Turkey today, India’s Sherpa for the G20 and Vice-Chairman of NITI Ayog Arvind Panagariya expressed confidence that in the forthcoming “Conference of Parties” CoP-21 meet at Paris by the end of this month would come out with a widely recognizable outcome.
On the question of fossil fuel cuts, he said though the Union Government is taking moves in that direction on its part, complete phase out of fossil subsidies cannot be acceptable as states have the powers to subsidize electricity for farming and fertilizer subsidy cannot be done away with. In the G-20 summit, India strongly advocated implementation of the Bali Package and ratification of trade facilitation agreement, for improvements on trade front, he informed.
India made a strong push for reduction of remittance charges which has come down to 7.5 percent on an average from the earlier 10 percent, but still is on a higher side. Mr Panagariya said India is favouring a rate as small as 3 percent. India is the world’s highest recipient of remittances from abroad through Indians working there.
A broad acceptance on controlling the problem of “Base Erosion and Profit Shifting” which in effect means corporates transferring the profits earned in one country to other tax havens to avoid taxes where the profit has been earned. The NITI Ayog Vice Chairman said the controlling mechanism is now moving towards implementation phase.