Some people believe that the Doha Round of trade talks under the World Trade Organisation (WTO) will be successfully concluded next year but commerce secretary Rahul Khullar thinks it will go on till 2014.

“It will be neither 2012 nor 2013 but might be 2014 for successful negotiations for the Doha Round,” Khullar told a Ficci seminar on trade talks.

Year 2012 is ruled out because of the US presidential election and 2013 is out of question because the US will have a new administration, either Democrat or Republican, and then negotiations would start afresh, he said. “If by the end of 2013, there is a deal on Doha Round, you are damn lucky,” said the commerce secretary.

He blamed the developed countries for spoiling whatever little chance there was for negotiations this year. “Until the economic trouble the world is facing abates, there is no hope of seeing any rosier picture,” Khullar pointed out.

He, however, suggested that multilateralism has to survive because Doha round is ‘stuck’. “If WTO has to survive in new circumstances or changed scenario it has to reinvent itself and by taking some of its jobs.”

The WTO ended its crucial biennial ministerial conference without making any headway on the way forward for the Doha Round of talks last week.

The Doha Round was launched in 2001 with the opening up the world market and helping poorer countries benefit from global trade. The talks have been regularly suspended for the past 10 years because the developing and developed countries have been unable to agree on a set of rules for the tariffs on agricultural sector, industrial goods and services.