FTA consensus unlikely during Asean summit
Business Standard (India)
FTA consensus unlikely during Asean summit
BS Reporter / New Delhi January 06, 2007
The proposed Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between India and the Asean countries is unlikely to materialise during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to the Philippines for the Asean summit beginning January 10.
“The FTA does not appear to be possible during the summit as we have not got any positive indications from them,’’ said a commerce ministry official. Concerns about negative list and the reduction of duties on certain items are blocking the deal.
Last December, India had offered to bring down items in the negative list to 490 from 560. However, it was apparently not enough to assuage the Asean members, according to a recent report in a Malaysian news agency - Bernama.
In another report on Friday, the agency said Asean members as well as India, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand were likely to initiate a study to assess the possibility of FTA among themselves during the summit.
According to the report, the idea of the proposed FTA has been mooted by Japan. The agreement to launch the study is expected to be endorsed on January 15. The initial Indian negative list consisted of over 1,400 items.
The Asean members — Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam — on their part had increased their list of negative items to 1,000 from 600.
The latest bone of contention is the Asean demand that India reduce import duty on items including palm oil, coffee and pepper, and that too within a specific span of time.
At present, the duty on refined bleached and deodorised palmolein oil is 80 per cent, while for crude palm oil it is 70 per cent. Negotiations on the proposed FTA with Asean first started in 2004. The agreement was supposed to be effective by 2007. The talks were suspended for a long time until August last year, when they resumed again.
