CII working out guidelines for FTAs
Indian Express, India
CII working out guidelines for FTAs
ENS ECONOMIC BUREAU
10 July 2006
NEW DELHI, JULY 9:Apex chamber Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) is working on a set of industry recommendations to come up with guidelines for signing Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). The WTO and other Trade Agreements Committee of the chamber is finalising the recommendations which will be submitted to the government within a month.
This is the first time an industry body is preparing a guideline on FTAs even though questions have been raised in the past regarding the spate of FTAs being signed by India. The guidelines may hint at encouraging multilateral agreements under WTO more than bilatreal trade and investment agreements.
‘‘Bilateral agreements having divergent standards with different countries may not help India remain competitive in the international market,’’ said CII WTO and other Trade Agreements Committee Chairman R V Kanoria.
The CII guidelines will have clauses on contentious issues like negative lists and common floor tariff. ‘‘We support trade liberalisation in every possible way and are in favour of FTAs. But simultaneously internal reforms need to gather momentum or else the domestic industry will become uncompetitive in the global market,’’ said CII expert on WTO and trade agreements T S Vishwanathan.
CII will also highlight issues like lack of uniform taxation, even though the country is moving towards a common GST by 2010, and the problem of inverted duty structures which plagues a number of sectors today.
CII will voice concerns on unilateral reduction in duties and tariffs. ‘‘Whatever cuts that have to be made has to be multilateral to enforce a level playing field,’’ Vishwanathan added.
