NEW DELHI, August 5 (NNN-BERNAMA) — An Indian minister has called for a review of the country’s decade-old free trade deal with ASEAN, arguing that it would help in achieving bigger trade volumes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“The review of the India-ASEAN Trade in Goods Agreement is pending,” junior minister for trade Hardeep Singh Puri was quoted as saying by news agency Press Trust of India.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“India’s annual trade deficit with ASEAN is close to US$24 billion. The reasons are multiple and I would like in the coming months and years to see this trade deficit narrowed,” the minister said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Puri made the remarks Tuesday in a virtual conference in which Malaysia’s deputy International Trade and Industry Minister Senator Lim Ban Hong also participated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said a review of the ASEAN-India Free Trade Agreement would have the potential to double trade between India and the 10-member Southeast Asian bloc, according to a press release issued by the conference’s organiser Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The FTA was signed in 2009 and came into force on 1 January 2010.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The minister’s remarks reflect India’s growing dissatisfaction with the existing FTAs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar said last month that the FTAs India has signed over the years have not helped the Indian economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“The fact is that they have not served the economy well in terms of building our capacities. I think there are ways of engaging the world which do not necessarily have to be FTA-centric,” he said in an online discussion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
— NNN-BERNAMA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NEW DELHI, August 5 (NNN-BERNAMA) — An Indian minister has called for a review of the country’s decade-old free trade deal with ASEAN, arguing that it would help in achieving bigger trade volumes. “The review of the India-ASEAN Trade in Goods Agreement is pending,” junior minister for trade Hardeep Singh Puri was quoted as saying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":12305,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[215,288,300,318],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86371"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=86371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=86371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=86371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=86371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}