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Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal and his Australian counterpart Dan Tehan met in New Delhi on Thursday to push forward the India-Australia free trade negotiations that they seek to conclude this year.
“Delighted to further the ongoing negotiations on India-Australia Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement along with my Austrailan counterpart Dan Tehan in New Delhi. Both sides are working towards a mutually beneficial agreement for both our people and economies,” Goyal tweeted after the meeting.
The two ministers are likely to meet again on Friday to have further negotiations and narrow down the landing zone for the two countries, an official tracking the matter said.
India and Australia countries are working on an interim trade deal, involving a limited number of items, that is to precede the full fledged Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA).
CECA
The CECA is to cover multiple areas such as goods, rule of origin, e-commerce, non-tariff barriers to trade in goods, cross-border trade in services, financial services, investment, including investor-state dispute settlement, government procurement, intellectual property, movement of persons and competition policy.
The interim agreement was supposed to be in place by the end of 2021, but had to be delayed as the list of items on which tariff concessions were to be given by both sides could not be finalised.
Concessions
While India may give some concessions to Australia in the areas such as wines and automobiles, it is expected to remain cautious in areas such as agriculture, and dairy products because of the sensitive nature of the items and the need to protect the livelihood of farmers.
India seeks to gain in areas such as textiles and leather. It also hopes to persuade Australia to agree to more liberal visa norms for workers.
India was Australia’s seventh-largest trading partner and sixth-largest export market in 2020, driven by coal and international education. Bilateral trade in 2020-21 was at $12.29 billion with India running a deficit of $4.2 billion.
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