Indo-EU FTA delays over auto and wine tariff reduction

18 Jul 2011 Evaluate

The Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between India and 27 members European Union is held up over the issue of lowering import duty on automobiles and wines and spirits with government insisting that it is unable to reduce tariffs for both products that have a strong domestic lobby.

A senior government official said, 'we have told them (EU) that we are unable to offer any concessions since we have not included these two sectors in our FTAs.' There is also fear that if Indian government opens these sectors to EU then automobile producer countries like Japan and South Korea will ask for similar tariff reduction for these sectors. India has entered into FTA with these nations without reducing customs duty on these products, is holding back any concessions from government.

Another senior government official involved with the EU FTA negotiations said, 'Japan has already written to the government saying that it would want duty concessions for automobiles if the same is offered to EU.'

From last four years India and EU have been negotiating a comprehensive trade and investment agreement comprising goods and services and it was expected that the agreement will be done by the May-June, however both the sides have not been able to reach to the agreement. Whereas government official rejects any move to offer any concessions in sectors like intellectual property rights, environment and labour, which is something EU has been demanding, however, on the issue of automobiles EU is not giving any clear response. 

It is reported that the government may not be agreeing to offer any concession in tariffs for automobile sector. Regardless, through the Automotive Mission Plan, Indian government has promised to protect import of 77 items belonging to auto sector. In the Automotive Mission Plan 2006-16, government said, there is a need to keep these 77 items in the negative list for FTAs with Thailand, Bimstec (the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation), Asean, China, EU, Korea, Japan etc for which no duty concession should be extended.'

The second best solution for this situation can be government offer concessions in tariffs after the 2016; however, this solution also would require push from the top government functionaries. On the other hand, wines and spirits, which is considered as sin goods, Indian government has always opposed steep duty reduction and with EU, government may find politically difficult to do so.

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