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India and Canada have agreed to re-launch the negotiations for India-Canada Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) and also work on an interim agreement to bring early commercial gains to both the countries before the full pact is finalised.
This was decided at a bilateral meeting between Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal and his Canadian counterpart Mary Ng who jointly chaired the fifth Ministerial Dialogue on Trade & Investment in New Delhi on Tuesday, according to an official release issued by the government.
Canada also agreed to examine expeditiously the request for Conformity Verification Body (CVB) status to APEDA for facilitating Indian organic export products and work on providing market access for Indian agriculture goods such as sweet corn, baby corn and bananas.
India, on its part, agreed to look at giving recognition to Canada’s pest risk management for smooth trade in pulses.
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Goyal said FTA is a two-way traffic and industry should inculcate a greater appetite for risk taking“The interim agreement, or the Early Progress Trade Agreement (EPTA), would include high level commitments in goods, services, rules of origin, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, technical barriers to trade, and dispute settlement, and may also cover any other areas mutually agreed upon,” the release stated.
The two countries had first launched negotiations on a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement in 2010, but it did not make significant progress.
“The Ministers highlighted the existing trade complementarities between India and Canada and emphasised that the trade agreement would help in expanding bilateral trade in goods and services through unlocking the potential across sectors,” the release said.
Supply chains
The Ministers acknowledged the significance of establishing resilient supply chains in critical sectors. They emphasised enhancing cooperation in sectors such as pharmaceuticals and critical and rare earth minerals as well as in areas like tourism, urban infrastructure, renewable energy and mining, the release said.
Canada was India’s 32nd largest trading partner in 2020-21 accounting for $3 billion of exports and $2.7 billion of imports.
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