Economic Times, India

CII: level playing field for domestic industry

23 April 2006

PTI/NEW DELHI: Concerned at the spate of Free Trade Agreements being signed by Government, CII on Sunday demanded a comprehensive strategy to ensure a level playing field for the domestic industry including small and medium enterprises.

"The government needs to have a strategy. A strategy that is consistent with our internal reforms to ensure level playing field. Government should also evaluate how the FTAs would help us in signing multilaterals," said newly elected CII President R Seshasayee.

Asked if the industry felt it was being pushed into a FTA regime, Seshasayee said, "We had a premonition about an approaching FTA regime. We were surprised at the number of FTAs and the speed, particularly the speed with which FTAs were signed with couple of countries".

Seshasayee, however, advocated FTAs with countries which had capital, technology and huge markets and had offered certain complementarities.

For the success of FTAs, Seshasayee, who is the managing director of Ashok Leyland said reforms should be managed carefully besides taking ample precautions of necessary safegaurds like stringent Rules of Origin.

"We should have an organised way and look at the complimentary competencies between the countries, then the FTAs will work better and will be more sustainable," he said.

Seshasayee also wanted Government to evolve a mechanism for Rules of Origin (ROO) and have it same with all the countries with whom FTAs were entered into. He said different ROOs will complicate the situation more.