Status of Some Recent Bilateral/Regional Cooperation Agreements of India

RCEP Agreement among ASEAN + 6 FTA Partners (Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand)

• Based on the Declaration of the Leaders during the ASEAN Summit in November, 2012, negotiations for a Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (RCEP) between the 10 ASEAN member states and its 6 FTA partners commenced in May, 2013.
• The 3rd Intersessional RCEP Ministerial was concluded in Hanoi from 21-22 May, 2017.
• India hosted the 19th RCEP Round from 18-28 July, 2017 in Hyderabad. The negotiations covered a number of areas like trade in goods, services, investment, intellectual property, economic & technical cooperation, competition and legal & institutional issues.

India-Sri Lanka ETCA

• India and Sri Lanka have an existing free trade Agreement, covering trade in goods, which was signed in 1998 and entered into force in March 2000.
• In December 2015, India and Sri Lanka agreed to start negotiations for a new comprehensive agreement titled ‘Economic and Technology Cooperation Agreement (ETCA)’.
• The scope of the Agreement includes trade in services, investment issues and cooperation in various fields such as technology, customs, standards,etc apart from trade in goods.
• Four Rounds of Negotiations have been held so far with the latest Round held on 24th-26th April 2017 in New Delhi.

India - EU BTIA

• Negotiations were launched on 28th June 2007 in the areas of Goods, Services, Investment, Sanitary and Phyto-sanitary Measures, Technical Barriers to Trade, Trade Facilitation and Customs Cooperation, Competition, IPR & GIs. etc.
• The negotiations were revived with 4 stocktaking meetings in January, February, July and November, 2016.
• India - Thailand CECA: The 30th round of the Trade Negotiation Committee was held on 13-14 July, 2016 in New Delhi The Early Harvest Scheme on 82 items has been implemented.

India-Korea CEPA Review

• During the Joint Committee meeting at the Ministerial level held on 18 June, 2016 in New Delhi, the two sides declared commencement of negotiations for upgrading India-Korea CEPA.
• Two rounds of negotiations for upgrading India-Korea CEPA have been held so far with the 2nd round of negotiations held on 13-14 February, 2017 in New Delhi.

India-EaEU FTA

• The joint feasibility study group (JFSG) report was finalised by India and EaEU (Eurasian Economic Union) in Sep, 2016.
• India has received approval from the competent authority to initiate the FTA negotiations. However, EaEU is still in the process of receiving the necessary approval from the competent authorities.

Trade Facilitation Agreement

The WTO’s Trade Facilitation Agreement represents an important milestone by creating an international framework for reducing trade costs. The objectives of this agreement are in consonance with India’s ”Ease of Doing Business” initiative.

India considers “Trade Facilitation” to be particularly important for developing countries. Even modest reductions in the cost of trade transactions would have a positive impacton trade for both the developed and the developing world.

As per its commitment, India notified its category “A” commitments in March 2016 and later on ratified the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) in April 2016.

Approximately 70% of the total provisions given under TFA have been notified as category “A”. Remaining provisions have been classified under category “B” which are to be implemented after a transition period of 5 years.

A National Committee on Trade Facilitation (NCTF) has been set upto facilitate both domestic coordination and implementation of the provisions of TFA.

An Action Plan containing specific activities to further ease out the bottlenecks to trade, has also been prepared. Given the increasingimportance of trade in services for the world as a whole, India has taken the initiative to launch discussions on Trade Facilitation in Services (TFS) Agreement at the WTO, as a counterpart of the goods-specific Trade Facilitation Agreement.