NEW DELHI (AFP) ― India and the United States said Thursday they have resolved a row over food subsidies that has been blocking a landmark global trade agreement.

India refused to endorse the Trade Facilitation Agreement in July unless its food stockpiles were exempted from possible punitive measures, prompting the U.S. to accuse it of taking the World Trade Organization “to the brink of crisis.”

But on Thursday both sides agreed India’s food security programs would not be challenged under WTO rules “until a permanent solution regarding this issue has been agreed and adopted,” a U.S. government statement said.

The White House said the deal would “unlock progress toward the full and immediate implementation of the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement, which will lower the costs of trade for developed and developing countries.”

India said it was “extremely happy that India and the U.S. have successfully resolved their differences relating to the issue of public stockholding for food security purposes.”

“This will end the impasse at the WTO and also open the way for implementation of the Trade Facilitation Agreement,” Commerce Minister said in a statement.

WTO Director-General Roberto Azevedo has been tirelessly campaigning to save the deal, which would streamline global customs procedures, and, he claims, create billions of dollars in benefits each year.

Last week, he said the impasse had “effectively paralyzed the multilateral negotiations in the organization,” calling it the “most serious crisis the WTO has faced.”

India’s new Prime Minister Narendra Modi discussed the issue with U.S. President Barack Obama when he visited Washington in September, raising hopes of a breakthrough.

New Delhi’s decision in July to hold up the landmark deal to reduce trade barriers came after the WTO’s members agreed at a December 2013 meeting in the Indonesian island of Bali to implement the pact.

India and its supporters in the developing world have argued that food stockpiling is essential to ensure poor farmers and consumers survive in the cutthroat world of business.

But stockpiling and subsidies for the poor are considered trade-distorting under existing WTO rules.

Western countries, led by the United States, have raised concerns that such stocks could leak on to global markets, skewing trade.

At the time of the Bali accord, WTO members agreed on a four-year “peace clause” to protect India from being punished over subsidies and stockpiles until a “permanent” solution” was reached.

The agreement was due to take effect in mid-2015.

But after the Bali pact, Indian officials complained there were nearly two dozen meetings on the trade facilitation pact and just a handful on subsidies.

Bali was the first multilateral agreement concluded by the WTO since its inception in 1995.

It also signaled the first concrete progress on the Doha Round of trade liberalization talks, launched in 2001 and aimed at underpinning development in poorer nations.

It took nearly a decade to conclude the trade facilitation part of the talks, which began in 2004.