For trade talks with Canada, India offers ‘Hybrid’ model of positive & negative lists
The proposal was made in an informal meeting a few days ago and is based on the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement that uses the two approaches to negotiate a trade pact.
The 10th round of the India-Canada CEPA talks were held in August 2017.
NEW DELHI: India is exploring, for the first time, a ‘hybrid’ model to liberalise its services under a free trade agreement.
As part of its trade pact negotiations with Canada, India has offered to give a ‘positive’ list spelling out the services it can liberalise and has asked Canada to come out with a ‘negative’ list stating the exceptions to services it wants to open up.
India proposed the model ahead of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s visit and is waiting for Ottawa’s response. “We have offered them a hybrid model for services negotiations and they are yet to respond to it,” an official aware of the development said.
The proposal was made in an informal meeting a few days ago and is based on the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement that uses the two approaches to negotiate a trade pact. “Once they agree, there will be an exchange of requests,” the official added.
The 10th round of the India-Canada CEPA talks were held in August 2017. “We are following the GATS approach and the hybrid model is beneficial for us because we have given up a lot of market access in services, especially financial services in others FTAs,” said Biswajit Dhar, professor at JNU.
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The two countries are also negotiating a Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (FIPA). “We need to see how trade and investment linkages can be harnessed in the CEPA. This can be done if Canadian investments come in manufacturing of goods, which ultimately India can export to Canada after getting tariff concessions”, said Ram Upendra Das, head at Centre for Regional Trade.
On goods negotiations, the official said the two sides have agreed on the modalities on the tariff concessions and negative list. In 2016-17, India-Canada bilateral merchandise trade was $6.1 billion. India has suggested Canada’s advantage in geospatial planning and the work done in geographical information system should be utilised to analyse crop production systems in India, forecast the trend for the next 10 years and work towards a predictable environment for potential supply of pulses from Canada, which is a large producer of pulses.
