FTA talks with other countries on track: Piyush Goyal
Commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal said negotiations for bilateral free trade agreements (FTA) with several countries are “well on track” and India is also looking at some multilateral pacts that are fair and equitable for all the member countries.
At the 27th Wharton India Economic Forum, he also said it is essential that the agreements are balanced and in the best interest of both the countries.
“We are well on track in discussions with several other countries to look at bilateral trade agreements. We are looking at one or two multilateral trade agreements also where we believe we can get benefit,” Goyal said. He said India cannot make every product efficiently and that imports are important for those goods.
India implemented an FTA with the UAE in May 2022 and with Australia in December 2022, and is negotiating such pacts with Canada, the EU and the UK.
He said India is competitive in several sectors such as labour-oriented areas like textiles, leather, footwear and pharma, and for that these trade agreements would be beneficial. Due to this “we decided that we must talk to like-minded countries particularly countries which have a rule-based trading order, which are transparent in their economic systems as India is and enter into arrangements which are win-win for both the sides and which are fair, equitable and balanced”.
On the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which India decided not to join in 2019, Goyal said it was a very unfair and unbalanced agreement, and one of the member countries in the RCEP group has a “very opaque” trading system.
He said that going forward, it is important to focus on quality products and services, and that infrastructure, semiconductor and domestic manufacturing are some of the priority sectors for the government.
“In 2022, India did 74 billion financial transactions digitally. It is more than Europe, the US and China combined. India is working towards becoming a high quality, high technology and a service-oriented economy, well equipped to meet the needs of the rest of the world,” Goyal said. (Economic Times)
