The Hindu Business Line : EU free trade pact: Consultations on to identify ‘sensitive list’

Coimbatore, Nov. 28 The Union Ministry of Commerce and Industry is in the process of holding consultation meetings with industry stakeholders for identifying ‘sensitive items’ for India-European Union Free Trade Agreement.

While sharing a ‘tentative list’ of items and seeking industry feedback with logic for inclusion or deletion from the shared list, Mr Ajay Srivastav, Director in the Commerce Ministry, requested the members who participated in the discussion held by the Confederation of the Indian Industry here on Wednesday to submit their request by December 1.

The fourth round of negotiation for a Bilateral Trade and Investment Agreement (BITA) between India and the EU is scheduled between December 6 and 12 at New Delhi.

Commerce Ministry representatives meanwhile are holding consultation meetings across places such as Ludhiana, Kolkata, Kochi, Lucknow, and Ahmedabad to get industry stakeholders feedback.

Speaking on the sidelines of this discussion, Mr Srivastav said he envisaged a number of modifications in the final list and hoped the FTA to conclude by the beginning of 2009.

Asked about the advantages of signing the FTA with the EU, he said: “We have an advantage over others in the goods and services space, we can look for EU investment commitment here and trade. The market is bullish. With the EU we are not competing in many areas.”

He lamented about the lack of investment in the knowledge creation space, while admitting the lavish spend.

Balance of trade

In spite of providing a substantial market for India’s exports besides being an important supplier of the country’s imports, the balance of trade has always been in the European Communities favour, he said, and pointed out that the exports to the EU stood at $19.2 billion in 2006-07 (April-December), while imports were higher at $20.1 billion.

Reverting to specifics, he said the textile sector had sought deletion of textile machinery products from the ‘tentative’ sensitive list. “While relatively high technology textile machinery products have been deleted to encourage import of such products, certain low technology textile machineries have been retained,” he said.

Industry representatives here requested for removal of the circular knitting machines and other machinery for sizing and dressing cotton textiles. They also requested that viscose staple fibre be taken out from the sensitive list.