Asean calls off FTA parleys with India
In a statement made on Tuesday to its national news agency, the Malaysian trade minister said that the Asean had decided to call off the negotiations because of the existing differences between the two sides on the items to include in the FTA.
By TNN |
NEW DELHI: Asean has decided to call off its free trade agreement (FTA) negotiations with India. In a statement made on Tuesday to its national news agency, the Malaysian trade minister said that the Asean had decided to call off the negotiations because of the existing differences between the two sides on the items to include in the FTA.
The Indian government has expressed surprise at the statement as senior officials from India and Asean had recently agreed to come up with specific proposals to nudge the FTA talks forward.
Speaking to ET, commerce ministry officials said at a meeting in Singapore on July 21, India and the Asean had decided to resolve the current impasse by coming up with proposals to break the deadlock within 15 days. “The Malaysian minister’s statement has taken us completely by surprise,” an official said.
Malaysia’s international trade and industry minister Datuk Seri Rafidah Aziz told the country’s national news agency Bernama that the FTA talks had been suspended because India was reluctant to open its markets to the Southeast Asian countries.
India had refused to bring down its negative list of items which are to be excluded from the FTA below 852. Officials said the Malaysian minister had written to her counterparts in other Asean countries about two weeks back stating that the FTA should be called off if India refuses to prune its negative list to sixty items. However, the matter was taken care of in the Singapore meeting.
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India finds Asean’s proposal of a sensitive list containing less than 100 items unacceptable. It does not want to expose agriculture products like palm oil, pepper, tea and coffee to open competition, as is being demanded by the 10-member bloc. It, however, has offered to allow imports of specified agriculture items in limited quantities through tariff quotas.Malaysia and Indonesia, which want to export palm oil to India duty free, had rejected India’s offer of allowing imports through tariff quotas.
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