India, ASEAN to meet next month for FTA talks
The Hindu | 17 Oct 2006
India, ASEAN to meet next month for FTA talks
New Delhi, Oct 17. (PTI): India and ASEAN will make another attempt next month to break the deadlock in talks for a Free Trade Agreement, which if clinched would come into force in 2007.
"The meeting of Trade Negotiation Committee (TNC) is likely to be held on 18-19th of next month," Commerce Secretary G K Pillai said.
The TNC would attempt to build an agreement on the list of items from both sides, on which duties would not be cut.
While India has a list of 560 items, on which it has refused to cut tariffs, ASEAN countries have come up with a list of 600 items.
Early this month, the member countries of ASEAN met to discuss a new proposal from India to cut its negative list to 560 and formulate its offer.
"We have not heard from them as yet," Pillai said after presenting Engineering Export Promotion Council awards.
The meeting in November assumes significance as the December deadline to conclude the negotiations is round the corner. Both sides have already missed the June 2005 deadline to finalise the FTA.
The pact could not be finalised then, as the two sides have reservations over the other’s negative list.
India has claimed that negative list of 600 products sent by the ASEAN countries was resulting in the inclusion of just 80 per cent of products that are traded, while India’s list takes care of 95 per cent of the traded products.
India has substantially reduced its negative list of 1,440 items to 854 tariff lines in the first step and to 560 in its revised offer. However, for 294 items it has said that tariffs will be gradually reduced.
