Australian trade minister Dan Tehan to visit India to push interim trade deal
Hindustan Times | 8 February 2022
Australian trade minister Dan Tehan to visit India to push interim trade deal
Australian trade minister Dan Tehan will travel to India this week for talks with his counterpart Piyush Goyal to push efforts to finalise an interim trade deal amid apprehensions on the Indian side on opening up the agriculture and dairy sectors.
This will be Tehan’s second visit to India since September last year and reflects the importance attached by both countries to finalising a bilateral comprehensive economic cooperation agreement (CECA) following the interim deal. Tehan is set to hold talks with Goyal in New Delhi on February 10.
Both sides had earlier said they intended to conclude the interim trade deal by December 2021 but were unable to stick to the timeline for a variety of reasons, people familiar with the matter said.
“Minister Tehan is committed to concluding a full CECA by year’s end and his second visit in five months demonstrates his personal commitment to delivering a successful outcome,” Australian high commissioner Barry O’Farrell said on Tuesday.
“Negotiators are exploring outcomes for an interim agreement, including on goods and services, energy and resources, logistics and transport, standards, rules of origin, and sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures,” he said.
Negotiators of both countries are “looking at outcomes for an interim agreement in the context of concluding negotiations for a full CECA by end-2022”, O’Farrell added.
Two Indian officials with direct knowledge of the matter, requesting anonymity, said the two countries are committed to expeditious negotiations on the CECA and talks are progressing in that direction.
“Efforts are on for an interim agreement soon to liberalise and deepen bilateral trade in goods and services, followed by a full CECA, for which negotiations are expected to be concluded by the end of 2022,” one of them said.
The second official said India will safeguard its agriculture, dairy and fishery sectors while concluding multilateral or bilateral trade deals. For a developing and populous country such as India, food security of the underprivileged is of paramount importance, including protection of its agriculture and farm sectors, he said.
India’s commitment to protecting the agriculture sector was reflected in the prime minister’s last-minute decision in November 2019 to exit the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) though it is one of the biggest trade blocs, the second official said.
India walked out of RECP as it apprehended the deal could flood the domestic market with Chinese goods, and that cheap imports of milk derivatives from Australia and New Zealand would be detrimental to the Indian dairy industry, he added.
RCEP covers almost 30% of the global population, contributes $25.8 trillion or about 30% of global GDP, and accounts for $12.7 trillion or a little over a quarter of global trade in goods and services. Its members are the 10 Asean countries, and Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea.
However, O’Farrell said Australia regards the CECA as “important to India and Australia delivering their vision of a secure and prosperous Indo-Pacific”. Both sides support economic openness and upholding the rules-based trading system and “we recognise that strong economies provide the opportunities our citizens seek”, he added.
Indian officials said apprehension about negotiations on the trade deal with Australia involving imports of dairy and agriculture products is incorrect. “The negotiations have focused entirely on mutually beneficial items of trade, and India has not made any offer at all in [the dairy or agriculture] sectors to Australia,” one official said.
He was reacting to a tweet by Bhartiya Kisan Union (BKU) spokesperson Rakesh Tikait that said the government will sign an agreement with Australia that will allow milk imports at ₹20-22 a litre, much lower than the retail price of locally produced milk, at around ₹50-55 a litre.
Responding to this tweet, Union minister for fisheries, animal husbandry and dairy Parshottam Rupala too said this is a rumour. “There is no proposal for any duty concession on import of dairy products into India with Australia under consideration with the department of animal husbandry and dairying,” he said.
