Taking India's Look East policy a step further, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Saturday announced visa-on-arrival facility for citizens of Cambodia, Vietnam, Philippines and Laos; and emphasised the need to speed up the finalisation of a free trade agreement in services and investment between India and South East Asian nations.
The US should build on the nuke deal with India by negotiating a full-fledged bilateral free trade agreement, says Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.
Trade ministers of India and ASEAN countries are likely to meet in Singapore next month to work out a common ground so that the much-awaited India-ASEAN free trade agreement takes off next year.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations is expected to sign a free trade agreement with India next week, Malaysian International Trade and Industry Minister Rafidah Aziz has said.
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India-European Union Broad-based Trade and Investment agreement came up for discussion in a meeting between Sharma and visiting Netherlands Minister of Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation Lilianne Ploumen in New Delhi.
"It will be ensured that such agreements (free trade agreements) do not have a detrimental effect on domestic manufacturing in India," according to the National Manufacturing Policy (NMP), cleared by the Union Cabinet on October 25.
"The fact that not many FTAs were sealed shows the cautious approach of the policy makers," said Ram Upendra Das, fellow, Research and Information System for Developing Countries. "But India has recognised that these duty-free agreements are the order of the day as other countries are engaging in similar deals. Indian exporters will be left out if the nation does not engage in these types of agreements with its trading partners," he added.
"We are very keen that before the year is out we should have an agreement on a comprehensive economic partnership," Dr Manmohan Singh said in an interview to a Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun. The two countries had earlier failed to finalise a trade deal by mid-2008 or to achieve visible progress in time to sign it during a three-day visit by Singh to Japan which started on Tuesday, the paper said.
The drafts or rules are prepared by Directorate General of Safeguards and it is to be issued by Finance Ministry in consultation with commerce ministry. The government may impose safeguard duties, which could be as high as more than 100 per cent, after thorough investigations confirm that import surge is leading to 'serious injury, market disruption' to domestic industry.
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.
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
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.
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.
ICT products make up a minuscule $ 407 million, out of the $ 35.54 billion of total inbound shipments from the US, as of now.
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.
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 presently stands at 10 per cent and is expected to jump to 70 per cent in the next 2-3-years, the official said.
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.
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'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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Steps such as safeguard duty in the works to plug the route
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.
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).
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.
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