India and the United Kingdom have launched formal Free Trade Agreement (FTA) negotiations on Thursday, with the aim of concluding an early harvest trade agreement over the next few months.
Both countries, according to Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal, have agreed to avoid “sensitive issues” in the negotiations. Commerce Secretary BVR Subrahmanyam said the interim (early harvest agreement) aims to achieve up to 65 per cent of coverage for goods and up to 40 per cent coverage for services. By the time the final agreement is inked, the coverage for goods is expected to go up to “90 plus percentage” of goods, he added.
India is also negotiating a similar early harvest agreement with Australia, which is supposed to set the stage for a long-pending Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement that both countries have been pursuing for nearly a decade. While the commencement of negotiations does mark a step forward in the otherwise rigid stance adopted by the NDA Government when it comes to trade liberalisation, experts point to impediments and the potential for legal…
