INDIA has emerged as one of the top 25 leading exporters in the world along with countries like Brazil, Mexico and Malaysia.

Besides China, several new trading powers like Brazil, India, Mexico and Malaysia have emerged that are all in the top 25 leading exporters' table and all posted export growth of 15 per cent or better in 2011.

Pascal Lamy said developing countries share has increased to about 50 per cent compared to around 33 per cent of the global trade in 2008. Also trade as a share of the world GDP has grown from roughly 40 per cent in 1980 to around 60 per cent today. However, increasing use of non-tariff measures by different countries are impacting trade. These measures are regulatory in nature and are aimed at protecting consumers' health and safety. They include standards, testing and certification procedures. Moreover, removing these types of regulations is often neither desirable nor politically feasible.

The challenge before the WTO and other multilateral organisations is to reduce such discrepancies so that they do not conflict and unnecessarily restrict trade, he said.