FTA held up by trivial items
New Straits Times, Malaysia
FTA held up by trivial items
10 December 2005
TOILET seats, dolls and chewing gum were some of the products a bemused Datuk Seri Rafidah Aziz said had presented a hitch to the negotiations to the Asean-India Free Trade Agreement (AIFTA).
The International Trade and Industry Minister said a whopping 1,414 products had been placed by Indian officials in the FTA Exclusion List, which shielded them from trade liberalisation.
She said she had an "amusing discussion" with Shri Kamal Nath, the Indian Union Minister of Commerce and Industry, about the list, which had rendered negotiations impossible.
Kamal, who had not known about all these "trivial" products, she said, had promised India would revise the list. Rafidah said she was positive the process could thus be continued.
"We do not want to have an exclusion list presented before anything happens here. (The 1,414) products represent 44 per cent of Asean’s total exports to India.
"How can you exclude 44 per cent of our products already? It is jamming up the market ... I said ‘Kamal, you look at this, your officers have put in lavatory seats and covers’," a bemused Rafidah said at a Press conference on several meetings between the Asean Economic Ministers’ yesterday, held ahead of the 11th Asean Summit here.
She said India also had to look at the more substantial products in the exclusion list such as vegetable oils, petroleum products, rice and textiles, of which seemingly "every garment of every fibre in the world" had been listed.
"These were also excluded. So what is left?"
Malaysia is the country co-ordinator and the chair for the AIFTA.
Both Asean and India reiterated their commitment to implement the AIFTA by Jan 1, 2007.
Rafidah also said Asean and India had reached an agreement on the Rules of Origin (ROO), and had discussed the modality for tariff reduction.
Both sides have agreed that officials will continue their negotiations and expressed commitment that they would be concluded by June 2006.
Earlier, Kamal told reporters that too much emphasis should not be placed on the term "free-trade agreement" as it would only narrow the co-operation between aspiring nations.
"It should be looked at as economic co-operation or agreement.
