The Hindu Business Line : Singapore pact: Products list yet to be notified

New Delhi, Dec 4 Even after the Union Cabinet gave its nod to the amendment of India-Singapore Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA) for tariff elimination/reduction on 555 products which was said to have taken effect on December 1, nobody has any clue to the composition of such preferential products.

Liberalised products

Efforts to elicit details of at least a few products from the Department of Commerce met with characteristic official chariness in matters entailing such liberalisation. When asked about the product details, the officials said that normally it takes two to three weeks for such lists to be notified by the Revenue Department. There are niceties and draft protocol involved in this exercise as the import of such liberalised products would evoke domestic concerns from affected industries, mostly manufactured products.

The sources said that there are instances where some countries had taken even six months to notify the products for liberalisation on the ground that their Parliament was to approve such moves. “We are at least relatively faster than many of them,” the sources quipped.

Tariffs

Asked about this anomaly of announcing tariff liberalisation to partner country without informing the products that would qualify for such tariff elimination/reduction retrospectively as in this case when it was said to have commenced from December 1, 2007, the officials said that everybody does this and it is none of our problem!

When contacted the Minister of State for Commerce, Mr Jairam Ramesh, said thus: “I am sorry. It reflects poorly on our system and shows lack of transparency in the Government which I have always been fighting”.

Trade policy analysts contend that India’s openness of trade and policy liberalisation would lose much of its force if exchange of products under bilateral economic cooperation agreement for tariff concessions/elimination is not put on the Web site immediately after such conventions are ratified by the Union Cabinet.