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Greater market intelligence on China required, commerce official says |
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CHENNAI: There is a need for greater market intelligence on China to tackle that country's dominance over foreign trade, said a top official at the ministry of commerce and industry on Monday.
This is required as the final round of negotiations at Busan on regional comprehensive economic partnership (RCEP) agreements is round the corner, according to Bipin Menon, director, department of commerce.
The RCEP is a proposed Free Trade Agreement (FTA) among 16 countries, including the 10 members of ASEAN (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam) and six countries with which ASEAN has existing FTAs - Australia, China, India, Japan, Korea, and New Zealand.
Speaking at the industry consultation meeting held in Chennai on Monday, Menon outlined the broad modalities on which RCEPs would be negotiated.
While acknowledging that India along with other countries faced a huge threat on account of cheap imports from China, Menon also said that India's trade deficit of $48 billion for last year was a major pain point for India in particular.
He called for industry experts to visit China, understand their markets and provide ministry officials with suggestions on tackling China given that the initial offer on RCEP between India and China have been agreed at 42.5% threshold.
With nine rounds of negotiations complete, Menon attributed the genesis of RECP negotiations to the impasse at the WTO meet held in Doha in 2008.
"With the US initiated Trans-Pacific Partnership creating a western flank and the Trans Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between US and European Union forming an eastern flank, there was a need for an eastern flank to be created," said Menon. India is not party to either of the abovementioned deals.
Menon said initial offers have been made by all countries with investments and initial reservation lists submitted by all RCEP countries except India and China.
Fielding questions from industry representatives on tariff cuts on various goods and services like engineering design, renewable energy products, automobile parts, rubber and rubber components amongst others, Menon spoke about the complexity of the agreements given its impact on several industries including steel and palm oil.
With Malaysian palm oil prices at nearly 6.5 year low, India's imports of edible oil are its third largest spend after oil and gold. Indian edible oil producers have been pushing for restrictions on cheaper imports. Similarly, steel manufacturers have been opposing the inclusion of steel in the RCEP talks with domestic prices being higher than international prices.
Menon said the negotiation would involve some give and take and decisions would be made at a holistic level.
Source : timesofindia.indiatimes.com
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