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Commerce Secretary Rita Teaotia has said that a speedy and successful conclusion of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) between the 10-member ASEAN and its six free trade partners, including India and China, would be possible only with a higher level of commitment in services and investment.
“Today, the conversation is that the agreement on goods is easy and therefore the ambition should be to move from 86 per cent (of total traded items) to 92 per cent. On the other hand, the argument is not to go beyond 60 per cent of services and that too with several caveats,” Teaotia pointed out speaking at the plenary session on ‘ASEAN-India Trade, Investment and Technology’ at the tenth edition of the Delhi Dialogue on Friday. Teaotia stressed that services account for half of the GDP of the negotiating countries and therefore leaving services at a low level of ambition could not result in a balanced and complete outcome of the partnership agreement.
RCEP, a proposed pact between the ASEAN and Australia, China, India, Japan, Korea and New Zealand, accounts for 25 per cent of global GDP, 30 per cent of global trade, 26 per cent of global FDI flows and 45 per cent of the total population.
Dato Ramesh Kodammal, co-chair of the ASEAN India Business Council, said bilateral trade between ASEAN and India has crossed the $80 billion mark, which was the highest volume of trade in goods witnessed ever since the India-ASEAN FTA was signed in 2010.
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