India Should Include Gender Provisions In Trade Agreements: EXIM Bank

Chennai: While trade agreements across the world are increasingly including gender-related provisions, none of India’s FTAs and PTAs have even one provision. India should consider negotiating FTAs to bring down tariffs on women-intensive sectors and help women-led enterprises tap the government procurement opportunities, finds Exim Bank.

Gender issues have been increasingly integrated into regional trade agreements (RTAs) over the recent decades. Out of the 353 Regional Trade Agreements in force around the world, 101 RTAs include at least one explicit provision to address gender issues.

Further, 153 counties have at least one gender-specific provision in their RTAs. However, India is not one among these countries. As per the WTO database, none of India’s Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) have even one gender-specific provision or gender chapter.

India needs to consider renegotiating existing FTAs for including gender provisions or gender chapter in its FTAs. Sectors that are female-intensive, such as food and beverages, and textiles and apparel, on average face higher tariffs on inputs. In India as well, products produced largely by women face on an average 6 percentage-points higher tariffs than products produced largely by men.

There is a need for policymakers to negotiate tariff relaxation in these sectors that are relatively more important for female employment. Exim Bank’s analysis suggests that a 1 percent reduction in tariffs faced by India’s exports in these sectors that are relatively more important for female workforce could lead to a 0.363 per cent increase in labour supply in India and a 0.136 per cent increase in India’s GDP. The overall welfare gains from such a tariff reduction are estimated to be nearly 3.6 per cent.

The India-UAE trade agreement and India-UK FTA have dedicated chapters on government procurement. “India could undertake targeted measures for women-led enterprises to tap the procurement opportunities arising from such FTAs, as also to remain competitive in the wake of rising international competition in domestic procurements,” said Exim Bank.