India-UK FTA talks: ‘Good progress’ on bilateral investment agreement: Official
Daily Pioneer - 16 September 2023
India-UK FTA talks: ‘Good progress’ on bilateral investment agreement: Official
The talks on the proposed free trade agreement between India and the UK are moving and there is “good progress” on issues such as rules of origin and bilateral investment treaty (BIT), a senior official said on Friday.
These were few of the issues where there were differences between the two sides. “Many things are moving very fast. Like rules of origin and bilateral investment treaty, there is a good progress. Negotiations are happening... Towards the end of the deal, it is the difficult issues which are to be closed and therefore it requires more time and more deliberations,” Commerce Secretary Sunil Barthwal told reporters here.
He said that mobility is also one of the subjects which is being negotiated. The ’rules of origin’ provision prescribe that minimal processing should happen in the FTA country so that the final manufactured product may be referred as goods originating in that country.
Under this provision, a country that has inked an FTA with India cannot dump goods from some third country in the Indian market by just putting a label on it.
