Demand for short FTA sensitive list
The Hindu | 20 July 2005
Demand for short FTA sensitive list
Special Correspondent
Commerce Ministry brainstorming exercise on with Indian industry
NEW DELHI: India on Tuesday moved a step closer towards finalising its negotiating strategy for the BIMSTEC Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the Commerce Ministry continuing rigorous consultations with Indian industry for identifying the items of India’s export interest figuring in the "sensitive list’’ of other member countries.
At an interactive session on "BIMSTEC Free Trade Agreement (FTA)’’ jointly organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, FICCI asked for shorter negative' orsensitive’ lists of other member countries of BIMSTEC (Bangladesh, India, Mayanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand). Member-countries of BIMSTEC have already exchanged their initial Sensitive Lists' on June 24 in Thailand and negotiations are under way for the finalisation of thesesensitive lists.’
FICCI said India had strong export interest in BIMSTEC countries for many sectors like dairy, rice, processed food, steel, automobiles and auto-parts, electronics and paper and these items needed to be deleted from the Negative List of Bangladesh, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Nepal.
It was pointed out that the negative lists of other six member-countries of BIMSTEC received by India contained large number of items of export interest to India in these countries.
If the items of export interest to India were not deleted from the negative lists of these countries, then India’s exports of these items would not qualify for any preferential duty treatment under the FTA.
A significant proportion of India’s exports to these countries was in those sectors, which were covered in the negative lists. For instance, in case of Bangladesh, most of the items covered under the negative list belong to sectors like plastics, paper, cotton, man-made fibres, fabrics, apparels, metals, machinery, electronics and vehicles. And around 68 per cent of India’s exports to Bangladesh were in these sectors only.
