The agreement on services, if ratified by all member countries, could prove to be a game changer for Indian professionals in education, healthcare & IT.
In a bid to further boost the growing bilateral trade, Sri Lanka is seeking to upgrade its free trade agreement with India to include services and investments, officials said in Colombo.
Britain has finalised 1 billion pounds worth of new trade and investment with India, creating over 6,500 jobs in the UK, to be signed off at a virtual summit between Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi on Tuesday. The investments confirmed by Downing Street on Monday evening form part of an Enhanced Trade Partnership (ETP), which will set the ambition to double the value of UK-India trade by 2030 and declare a shared intent to begin work towards a comprehensive Free Trade Agreement (FTA). "Like every aspect of the UK-India relationship, the economic links between our countries make our people stronger and safer," Johnson said.
India is a market for low-priced cars with low running costs. The global majors don't have models that fit the bill; only Maruti and Hyundai have successful entry-level models, observes T N Ninan.
US said no to a free trade deal with India as India cannot fully open agricultural imports from American farmers.
The European Union has drawn up an initial negative list of 416 tradeable items on which it does not intend to provide duty cuts as part of the proposed free trade agreement with India
Sharma was speaking to journalists while returning with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh from Cambodia last night on special aircraft after attending the ASEAN and East Asia Summits.
After staging a strong recovery from COVID-induced slowdown in 2021, India's exports are likely to extend the growth story to the New Year also on increased demand in the global markets, boost in domestic manufacturing due to production-linked incentive schemes and implementation of some interim trade pacts. Expectations of positive growth in the country's exports are also backed up by the outlook of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) which predicts a 4.7 per cent expansion in the global merchandise trade volume in 2022. Exporters believe that the outbound shipments would cross $400 billion mark in this fiscal going by the current momentum and may reach $475 billion in 2022-23.
India's tax pie seems to have undergone a subtle change with a sharp drop in direct tax collections resulting from a disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 carnage on incomes. The share of indirect taxes, which mainly comprise of levy on goods and services as well as import duty, has risen while that of direct taxes - made up of corporate and personal income tax - has gone down in 2020. In an interview with PTI, finance secretary Ajay Bhushan Pandey said in a pandemic like this where the economy has been impacted, any large scale changes impact direct taxes more severely, whereas indirect tax collection is mostly proportional to business turnover and compliance.
A meeting to discuss what goods should be included in the negative list of items for India-European Union Free Trade Agreement, was held here recently.
With India and ASEAN making little progress on a proposed free trade pact, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asked the 10-nation bloc on Tuesday to be "more reasonable" on sensitive farm products. "We are trying to persuade our ASEAN friends to be more reasonable and I am hopeful that this process will yield satisfactory outcome," Singh said.
India and Australia are soon likely to initiate talks for a free trade agreement.
A senior European Union representative said here on Tuesday that the body would soon change its Customs laws to address the issue of seizures of Indian generic drug shipments while en route for export to other countries.
This presently stands at 10 per cent and is expected to jump to 70 per cent in the next 2-3-years, the official said.
India has offered further pruning of its negative list of 560 items for Association of South East Asian Nations on which there will be no duty cuts
This will hit the Indian plantation sector as it is not competitive, cost wise, and will be wiped out from the domestic market as well as from the export market, according to D P Maheshwari, president, United Planters' Association of Southern India.
Trade between China and ASEAN nations is expected to touch $ 300 billion this year, registering a 37.5 per cent increase on the back of a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between the two sides, said the executive secretary general of China-ASEAN Business Council.
Talks on an India-European Union Free Trade Agreement started in 2007. Six rounds of negotiations have been held but the two sides have not been able to arrive at a consensus on the level of trade to be covered under the FTA that will eventually eliminate duties on goods traded.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar left London at the end of a four-day visit to the United Kingdom on Friday with a message of convergence as the two countries agreed on an ambitious '2030 Roadmap' towards a Free Trade Agreement (FTA).
Steps such as safeguard duty in the works to plug the route
Buoyed by a 54 per cent growth in trade at $7.6 billion, India and China have decided to work out 5-year programme to enhance economic cooperation including a free-trade agreement.
The negotiations with Bangladesh for a free trade agreement will begin before October this year, External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha informed the Rajya Sabha on Thursday.
India is giving priority to boost trade with European Union and foresees no difficulty in signing a free trade and investment agreement with EU, notwithstanding wide differences between the two sides in the WTO over the Doha Round of trade talks. India and EU are negotiating a free trade and investment agreement aimed at phasing out and eliminating import duties on a large number of trade items.
According to the industry body, the 16-member RCEP has the potential to become one of the largest and economically dynamic trading blocs of the world, even bigger than the European Union.
India will not be signing the ambitious Free Trade Agreement with the 10-nation economic bloc, Association of Southeast Asian Nations, at the 4th East Asia summit to be held in Thailand on April 11 and 12. Commerce Minister Kamal Nath will be attending the summit, where the seventh India-Asean meeting is also scheduled at the same venue.
Commerce Minister Kamal Nath will attend an informal ASEAN Economic Ministers-India Consultation in Kuala Lumpur
The bill will now go to the House of Lords on Monday for voting before royal assent from Queen Elizabeth II to become law.
India has been forcefully raising the issue of market access as well as protected lists of goods mainly to shield its domestic market as there have been fears that the country may be flooded with cheap Chinese agricultural and industrial products once it signs the deal.
The EU should eliminate tariffs on 95 per cent of the goods under the Free Trade Agreement instead of the 90 per cent being targeted by the India-EU High Level Trade Group, the industry body said.
Piyush Goyal, who held the post of finance minister when Arun Jaitley was undergoing treatment, told the Confederation of Indian Industry's annual session: "All stakeholders, including the RBI, should introspect on their respective roles (on low economic growth)."
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, during his visit to the 13th Asean summit held at Singapore in November 2007, had indicated that India would take a flexible stand in the FTA talks.
Singapore on Wednesday said it was hopeful that a Free Trade Agreement with India would be signed by the middle of this year.
"We hope to reach a solution by July 2007," the minister said after the ASEAN-India economic minister's meeting held in Cebu, Philippines.
With a view to boost trade with Latin American countries and enhance South-South cooperation, India has proposed to sign Framework Trade Agreement with three trade blocks in the region including SICA, Caricom and ACS.
Adani Enterprises recently also inked a pact to buy out Linc Energy's royalty rights from the Carmichael coal project for AUD155 million.
Signing of the two pacts -- FTA in services and investments -- were scheduled during the India-ASEAN Economic Ministers meeting in Myanmar last week. But the meeting was postponed as Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman was not able to attend the meet due to domestic compulsions.
Marking a key milestone in the Indian government's fight against black money allegedly stashed abroad, India will get this month the complete information on flats, apartments and condominiums owned by Indians in Switzerland as also on earnings made from such properties to help it look into tax liabilities associated with those assets.
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