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Our Bureau

Chennai, June 29 While hoping that the Free Trade Agreement between India and Thailand would be concluded by October, the Thailand Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr Sawanit Kongsiri, blamed the present skewness in bilateral trade on lack of awareness in India about the FTA’s ‘early harvest scheme’.

In October 2003, India and Thailand signed a framework agreement for the FTA, which included an ‘early harvest’ list of 82 items, tariffs on which would be progressively brought down to zero over the next three years.

Thanks to this, the bilateral trade between the two countries has increased from $300 million before the scheme to $3.4 billion now. The target for the current year is $4 billion. But the trade is heavily skewed in favour of Thailand, with the country exporting to India more than its imports.

Asked about this, Mr Kongsiri said that India ought to take steps to make a lot of people become aware of the early harvest scheme.

The current negotiations are up against two issues — rules of origin and negative list. While India wants local value addition of 40 per cent, Thailand wants it to be not more than 30 per cent, in line with its other FTAs such as with China. Also, Thailand feels that India’s negative list is huge and needs to be pruned. A team from India is going to Thailand next month for further negotiations.

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