WTO: INDIA notifies subsidies to the WTO

In the previous post a presented questions from CANADA and the US on the subsidy notification to the WTO by Korea.

I had a look at the WTO website to see whether other WTO Members had made notification recently. India was one of these Members. The document reference is G/SCM/N/186/IND of 18 October 2010. The first paragraph of the 2 page long notification of INDIA reads as follows:

The following notification constitutes the Government of Republic of India's new notification of information on programmes granted or maintained at the central government level in India.  In general, the period to which the following information applies is for the Financial Years 2004-05, 2005-06, 2006-07, 2007-08 and 2008-09.

INDIA notifies only those subsidies "maintained at the central governement level", meaning that if subsidies are granted at state or subfederal level, these are not included in the notification.

Also interesting to note is that India is making the notification for a period covering five fiscal years. My reading of the WTO Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures, Article 25, is that WTO "Members agree that, without prejudice to the provisions of paragraph 1 of Article XVI of GATT 1994, their notifications of subsidies shall be submitted not later than 30 June of each year and shall conform to the provisions of paragraphs 2 through 6."

Finally, I was struck by the fact that India's notification concerns only one "subsidy programme", i.e. "Preferential tax policies for certain enterprises".  I found nothing in the notification concerning the "subsidy assistance programmes" maintained by India's Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA).