India in active dialogue for FTAs with nations including US, Oman, EU: Piyush Goyal

17 Oct 2025 Evaluate

Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said that India has implemented a number of free trade agreements (FTAs) with developed nations and is in active dialogue for such pacts with nations including the US, Oman, and the EU. India has implemented trade pacts with Australia, the UAE and EFTA bloc. It has also signed an agreement with the UK. He said ‘We have done free trade agreements (FTAs) with many developed countries in the last three years...We are in active dialogue with the US, EU, Chile, Peru, New Zealand, and Oman’. He added ‘It clearly shows that India is the favoured and preferred destination both for investment and for bilateral trade’.

He said with Brazil also, he has discussed expanding preferential trade agreement from its current level so that ‘we can’ in the future penetrate the South American market in a bigger way. The Indian official team is in Washington at present to hold trade talks with their US counterparts. The team will be there till October 17. In February this year, leaders of India and the US directed officials to negotiate a proposed Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA). They have fixed a deadline to conclude the first tranche of the pact by the fall (October-November) of 2025. So far, five rounds of negotiations have been completed. 

The proposed pact aims to more than double the bilateral trade to $500 billion by 2030 from the current $191 billion. The US remained India's largest trading partner for the fourth consecutive year in 2024-25, with bilateral trade valued at $131.84 billion ($86.5 billion exports). It accounts for about 18 per cent of India's total goods exports, 6.22 per cent in imports, and 10.73 per cent in the country's total merchandise trade. According to the commerce ministry data, India's merchandise exports to the US declined by 11.93 per cent to $5.46 billion in September due to the high tariffs imposed by Washington while imports increased by 11.78 per cent to $3.98 billion during the month.

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