India’s RCEP call won’t hit Act East Policy: Jaishankar

NEW DELHI: Foreign Minister S Jaishankar on Thursday assured ASEAN and RCEP members that its absence from the block in its present form in no way impacts India’s Indo-Pacific vision or Act East Policy.

“...the recent debate about the RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) offers lessons in foreign policy as much as in the trade domain. On the one hand, we should not go back to the old dogmas of economic autarky and import substitution. But at the same time, embracing the new dogma of globalisation without a costbenefit analysis is equally dangerous.

What we saw in Bangkok recently was a clear-eyed calculation of the gains and costs of entering a new arrangement.


We negotiated till the very end, as indeed we should. Then, knowing what was on offer, we took a call. And that call was that no agreement at this time was better than a bad agreement,” said Jaishankar while addresing a media event here.