Envoys of Nordic nations urge India to ink free trade pact with European Union

Ambassadors of the Nordic nations on Tuesday urged India to sign the much-awaited Free Trade Agreement with the European Union.

Nordic nations — part of Northern Europe — include Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, and their associated territories (Greenland, the Faroe Islands and the Åland Islands).

According to Peter Taksoe Jensen, Amabassador of Denmark to India, the bilateral trade between the Nordic nations and India stand at around $3 billion annually and there is a scope of increasing it substantially if India signs a Free Trade Agreement with the European Union.

“An FTA gives a level playing field. But India has not really decided as to what kind of economy it wants to be,” he told BusinessLine on the sidelines of interactive session organised by the Indian Chamber of Commerce (ICC).

Calling India “protectionist” with regards to sectors such as agriculture, Jensen maintained that a “free market” meant a greater competitiveness for the country.

“Gradually you have to be liberalised. The more free market you have, the more competitive you become. India has been quite protectionist about certain sectors like agriculture,” he said.

Thorir Ibsen, Ambassador of Iceland to India, too urged businessmen to impress upon the Centre to sign FTAs which will help “both exporters in India” and their Nordic counterparts.

Iceland, it may be mentioned, is still not a part of the European Union, but is a member of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) — a group of four non-EU countries — and also part of the European Economic Area (EEA). “We are pushing to get the rules approved in the area of free trade,” he said.

According to Nina Irmeli Vaskunlahti, Ambassador of Finland to India, an increase in customs duties and tariffs on telecom products that Finnish companies make here, is not a welcome move. It would mean an increase in cost of production and automatically a set back for the Centre’s ‘Make in India’ campaign.

“An increase in customs duties on components imported by Finnish companies that operate in the telecom sector pushes up cost. In the worst case scenario, production of cost could also double. Such increase in levies is a set back for the Make in India campaign too,” she said.

Also present at the interactive session were Nils Ragnar Kamsvag, Ambassador of Norway to India, and Ebba Littorin, Second Secretary, Embassy of Sweden in India.

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