India-EU FTA talks likely to conclude by April, 2013

15 Feb 2013 Evaluate

Moving a step closer to seal a deal that is expected to boost trade and investment, the negotiations for the India-EU Free Trade agreement (FTA) is expected to conclude by April this year. French Minister for external trade Nicole Bricq and Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma on February, 14 discussed the issues like level of market access relating to the FTA.

India and the European Unions (EU) are negotiating a broad-based Indian-EU Trade and Investment pact since June 2007 and have missed several deadlines to conclude the talks due to various differences. Meanwhile, during the meeting, both sides expect to close the negotiations by summer of April 2013 and hoped for a balanced and ambitious agreement.

While, addressing business chambers, Bricq said 'we are negotiating an FTA but we are still facing problems. From our side we still have few questions on liberalization of services sector on Indian part and some difficulties in automobile sector'.

Anand Sharma, in the meeting, also emphasized on the need for declaration of Data Adequacy Status from the 27-nation bloc to enable EU commitments in cross-border supply to be commercially meaningful to India. Further, Sharma added that considerable scope is available for French investments in India especially in sectors including high-tech sector, environmental technologies, energy including renewable, infrastructure and food processing sector.

Earlier, in February, the EU has underlined the need of more negotiations to sort out the remaining issues before a FTA with India is signed. During a special summit in Brussels, the EU leaders expressed the importance of building up bilateral trade relations with key emerging economies such as India, which could be 'very beneficial for promoting growth and employment'.

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