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A crucial meeting of trade ministers of RCEP member countries, including India and China, will take place in Singapore on November 12-13.
Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is a trade pact which aims to cover goods, services, investments, economic and technical cooperation, competition and intellectual property rights.
According to sources, the meeting is crucial as pressure is mounted on India to conclude the negotiations as early as possible, despite the fact that lots of issues are yet to be resolved. Commerce and Industry Minister Suresh Prabhu will represent India at the meeting.
Trade ministers of the 16-member RCEP had urged the participating countries to continue to take efforts towards meeting the target set in the package of year-end deliverables. The chief negotiators had concluded the 24th round of meeting in Auckland, New Zealand last month.
Several domestic industry sectors, including steel, food processing and metals, raise concerns over the presence of China in the group. They have stated that lowering or eliminating duties for China will flood Indian markets with Chinese goods.
India already has a free-trade agreement with Asean (Association of South East Asian Nations), Japan, and South Korea. And it is negotiating similar pacts with Australia and New Zealand. Besides, India has a trade deficit with 10 countries in this grouping.
Trade experts, too, have expressed apprehensions that eliminating duties for Chinese goods may further impact the domestic industry. Trade gap with China, Korea, Indonesia and Australia has increased to $63.12 billion; $11.96 billion; $12.47 billion and $10.16 billion in 2017-18. It was $51.11 billion, $8.34 billion, $9.94 billion and $8.19 billion, respectively, in the previous financial year 2016-17.
India is pushing for liberalising norms to promote services trade as the sector accounts for about 55 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). The country is also looking for a balanced trade agreement as it would cover 40 per cent of the global GDP and over 42 per cent of the world’s population.
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