UPA government moving away from multilateral arrangement under WTO to enter into FTAs: BJP

NEW DELHI: The BJP on Thursday took on the UPA government for entering into Free Trade Agreements ( FTAs) “without consulting stake holders” and demanded that all international treaties be endorsed by Parliament. The principal opposition party alleged on Thursday that the government was moving away from a multilateral arrangement under WTO and compromising the bargaining power in Doha Round, undermining the country’s federal structure and being secretive in the FTA engagements.

“The government is in a frenzy to enter into FTAs. What is condemnable is a fact that such agreements having potential adverse implications on the Indian economy for a longer period are not discussed even in the Cabinet, leave alone the Parliament and the opposition parties,” party spokesperson Prakash Javadekar told reporters here. Dubbing this as “undemocratic” , he demanded that a bill be introduced to make ratification of all international treaties by Parliament mandatory.

It also sought an all party meeting to discuss the issue, a debate in the monsoon session of Parliament and immediate release of negotiating text and impact assessment studies of FTAs/CECAs particularly EU-India . He said the UPA government has already concluded the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreements ( CEPA) with Japan, Singapore , South Korea and Malaysia besides a goods agreement with ASEAN and Thailand.

It is also negotiating CEPA with EU and EFTA. “All these agreements have tremendous impact on India’s overall Growth strategy especially employment , manufacturing, imports, exports,” Javadekar said. He alleged that the government was negating the benefits accrued to India after removal of Singapore issues at the Cancun WTO Ministerial Conference in 2003 as government procurement , investments and competition policies had been removed from the Doha Round.

The BJP leader said government was now engaged in negotiations on these very issues through the agreements. He also expressed resentment that while agriculture and health were essentially state subjects , the government was not consulting state governments thereby “undermining the very federal structure guaranteed by the Constitution .” He said the FTA engagements were nontransparent and secretive and that the government was not making available the impact assessment studies, negotiating text and relevant information in the public domain.