His statement came amid Indian trade negotiators reaching Washington for another round of talks on the proposed bilateral trade agreement (BTA), which will begin Monday, an official said. The four-day talks are likely to be held on all 19 chapters of the trade pact.
Speaking on the sidelines of an event on One District One Product event, Goyal also said New Delhi will continue to enter trading arrangements with developed countries which have economies complementary to India.
India and the US aim to conclude the first phase of the pact by fall (September-October) of this year.
“We are talking about a BTA. How it moves forward whether there will be first phase, second phase, will be mutually decided,” said an official on being asked if New Delhi expects an announcement on the trade deal before August 1, when the US reciprocal tariffs would come into force.
“We are going ahead with the BTA. We are going there. We will be doing our job. Remaining things we will leave to others…we are looking at a mutually beneficial solution,” the official added.Commerce secretary Sunil Barthwal said Monday that negotiations for proposed trade pacts with the EU and the US are going on and that the free trade agreements (FTAs) are key enablers to promote global capability centres (GCCs) in the country. “FTA with the UK has just been announced (on May 6). With the EU, which is going on, with the US, discussions are on,” Barthwal said at Confederation of Indian Industry’s GCC Business Summit.FTA progress
India and the EU aim to conclude the deal by the end of this year.
Barthwal added that in the FTA with the UK, there is a chapter on innovation, which was not the case earlier. He said today’s agreements are different from traditional FTAs confined to traditional trade. The new pacts are a more complex which include services too, he said.
Now there is also an institutional mechanism in these pacts to look at issues like harmonising regulations and standards; and resolving disputes, if any arises.
“If you look at these chapters in FTAs, how the services segments…they will be part of the FTAs, what will be the regulatory system in those services, including FDI and other regulatory practices that are being harmonised,” he said.
