First Phase of India-US Trade Pact Finalised, Legal Drafting Underway: Piyush Goyal
The minister also asserted that the free trade agreement between India and the European Union will be inked in December and would come into force from February or March next year
New Delhi: Amid delay in the US trade deal with India, commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal on Thursday said the first phase of the India-US trade pact has been finalised and is undergoing legal drafting. He expressed the hope that it would be finalised soon and operationalised once India secures a competitive advantage over its peer countries.
The statement of the trade minister came at a time when there is widespread speculation that the US trade deal may be delayed for a long time despite some convergence on tariffs and manufacturing overcapacity, New Delhi remains concerned about the concessions Washington is seeking for and the uncertainty that could persist even after a deal.
“The US bilateral trade agreement's first tranche has been finalised and it is going through final contours, the legal drafting, and we hope to be able to finalise that soon and operationalise that once we get the competitive advantage over our peer countries,” Goyal said here at an event.
The minister also asserted that the free trade agreement between India and the European Union will be inked in December and would come into force from February or March next year. Later, commerce secretary Rajesh Agrawal also said that the negotiations on the US trade pact are moving in the right direction. “Probably we are in a very good zone. We anticipate closing the deal and signing the deal at the earliest possible time,” he told reporters here.
Agarwal further said that the trade deal has to be signed when the overall tariff structure would be formalised in the US. “So there is a parallel work being done in the US also to get back the tariff structure and based on some of the outcomes under (Section) 301, we will progress towards signing the deal at a mutually agreed time,” he said.
The talks between India and the US have been continuing for nearly a year, but the deal has not come to a final conclusion yet since then despite the two sides having agreed on an interim deal framework earlier this year. Earlier this month, Recently, Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had said that talks had reached a plateau beyond which a compromise would be difficult. This followed comments from United States Trade Representative Jamieson Greer last Friday that a trade deal was in its final stages, but not imminent.