Government to examine if FTA's have delivered: Minister

NEW DELHI: The government aims to closely examine the results of FTAs and PTAs entered into earlier before signing more such trade agreements with other countries, Minister of State for Commerce and Industry D Purandeswari said here today.


"We did enter into FTAs and PTAs (Preferential Trade Agreements) with many countries. But again whether these FTAs and PTAs have really delivered is something that we need to very closely look at, which the government intends to do.

"We need to get our own house in order before we actually partner with other countries," Minister of State for Commerce and Industry D Purandeswari said at a seminar organised by PHD chamber here.

Besides several experts, apex exporters body FIEO (Federation of Indian Exporters Organisation) has said that exports to several countries with which India has signed Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) have shown a declining trend.

India has so far implemented free trade pacts with countries like Singapore, Korea, Japan and Malaysia. The country is negotiating similar pacts with several nations include Australia, Canada, European Union and New Zealand.

India's imports from Japan, with which it implemented a comprehensive free trade agreement in 2011, increased by over 3 per cent to USD 12.5 billion during the last fiscal.

Similarly, the country's imports from Malaysia grew by 9 per cent to $ 10.43 billion in 2012-13, from $ 9.55 billion during the earlier fiscal.

The country's exports to Japan declined to $ 6.26 billion during the last fiscal, from $ 6.32 billion in 2011-12.

When asked the measures the government was taking to put in place a single-window clearance mechanism and eliminate red tapism to attract more foreign investments, Purandeswari said the Ministry has undertaken a pilot project on a portal 'ebiz' to address investors' concerns.

"There are hurdles about going to various ministries to get various permissions. So the ministry of trade and commerce is now looking at creating a portal named ebiz so that a person who wants to invest in our country will have easy access to all the permissions that are required.

"We are doing a pilot project. And if we do feel that this is good and has been successful then we will definitely look at scaling it up", she said.

The ebiz portal, which was launched in January this year, was developed by IT major Infosys and aims at providing one-stop clearance platform for investment proposals.