|
Shri Kamal Nath, Union Minister of Commerce & Industry, has said that the comprehensive economic cooperation agreements being currently negotiated by India with a vast spread of countries in the East as well as the West will open up immense business opportunities for the country and it is for this reason, that India has been pursuing this economic strategy for the past seven months. "We have been very careful about the way we have gone about it. Whether an FTA can act as an engine for growth or otherwise would depend on the various features and contours of such an agreement. There is no ideal ‘type’ of FTA. FTAs have to be country-specific and grouping-specific", he said while addressing a Conference on Free Trade Agreements and Business Opportunities for India", organised by Indian Merchants Chamber (IMC)in Mumbai today.
India is currently negotiating comprehensive economic cooperation agreements with ASEAN and with Singapore, as also with MERCOSUR (a Spanish acronym for ‘Common Market of the South’ – involving Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay). India is also talking to SACU – a grouping of five southern African countries led by South Africa. The Framework Agreement between Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Thailand is called BIMST-EC. It is visualized as a ‘bridging link’ between two major regional groupings i.e. ASEAN and SAARC. Recently, India has signed an Early Harvest Programme as the first step towards establishing a free trade area between India and Thailand. Joint Study Groups with Pakistan, Israel and the Gulf Countries have also been established.
India must use FTAs to its advantage, Shri Kamal Nath said, adding that it was well recognized that progressive liberalisation in bilateral and regional spheres built the necessary confidence in domestic industries and made them globally competitive. "Of course, at every step Government will be in close contact with industry on these matters. FTAs may be signed by Governments, but it is businesses and industries that give them life. An FTA that is not ‘owned’ by industry is not worth the paper it is written on", he said.
The Minister also said that efforts were now underway to transform the SAARC Preferential Trade Area (SAPTA) into a full-fledged FTA to be called SAFTA effective from 1st January, 2006 and it was for this reason he travelled to Pakistan last month.
Emphasising that creating regional economic spaces would not detract from India’s overall objectives at the multilateral level, Shri Kamal Nath stressed that these regional trade agreements (RTAs) rather supplemented and complemented the multilateral trading order. "The recently concluded Framework Agreement of the WTO has laid down the principles and criteria for the more detailed, specific modalities that have to be negotiated. It is our hope that this will be completed by December 2005, when the next Ministerial will take place in Hong Kong. But this need not be so. The Uruguay Round took 8 years to negotiate. The Doha Round has already taken 4. When the WTO process reaches its final culmination, perhaps in the next 15 years or so, regional FTAs would become redundant. But that is a long way off", the Minister remarked.
|
