States to air their views on EU trade

The stakeholder consultation workshop, titled ‘India-EU Trade and Investment Agreement Negotiations: Identifying Products of Concern to India’, is the fifth workshop in a series of similar meetings being organised by the Department of Commerce and UNCTAD India Programme, covering stakeholders from all states and union territories.

India and the EU have recently launched negotiations for a Bilateral Trade and Investment Agreement (BITA). This would include FTA on goods and services, as well as agreements on investment and other areas. A focus area will be to promote bilateral trade by removing barriers to ‘trade in goods and services’ and ‘investment’ across all sectors of the economy.

India is expected to commit to a zero duty customs regime on substantially all imports from the EU, and similarly all EU member states are expected to commit to zero customs duty regime on substantially all imports from India since the agreement on trade has to be consistent with WTO rules and principles. Both India and the EU would have the flexibility to exclude certain products from the schedule of tariff elimination.