India, ASEAN trade ministers to meet on FTA

By agencies   |   Wednesday, 12 July 2006, 19:30 IST
Printer Print Email Email
NEW DELHI: The India-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement will finally see the light of the day with the Indian trade minister meeting the trade ministers of ASEAN in Singapore next month to work out a common ground. The meeting assumes importance in the backdrop of a sharp difference between India and the ASEAN members over the list of items on which New Delhi has not offered duty cuts. At the last official-level meeting in Singapore, the talks broke down as the ASEAN wanted India to reduce its negative list from 852 items to a mere 60. The FTA is scheduled to come into effect from January 1, 2007 but negotiations are stuck as India has asserted it would retain a large number of items in the negative list. Commerce Ministry officials said that India has already covered about 80 per cent or more of the tariff lines for trade with these countries. However, in case of Malaysia and Indonesia the coverage is less than 50 per cent since only palm oil accounts for half of their exports with India. India has now told Malaysia and Indonesia that it would continue to import the quantities of palm oil that is already being imported, besides covering additional imports in future to take care of the growth. But the imports would not be allowed on zero-duty, the officials said. Both the countries are, however, insisting on zero-duty imports and have not yet responded to India's latest proposal. The government had earlier offered ASEAN the option of Tariff Rate Quota on a few items such as palm oil, tea and coffee to export a limited quantity of these commodities at a lower tariff compared to the normal rate in India. However, the proposal did not find much favor with ASEAN.