NEW DELHI, October 29 (Aalimi Nation) – Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said on Thursday that the proposed India-US trade deal will not compromise a single sensitive interest of farmers or of any other stakeholder, and that it will leave India with a strong comparative advantage.
Mr. Goyal was speaking at the fourth National Conference on India's Industrial Transformation in New Delhi. He said the trade agreements India negotiates will be fair, equitable and balanced.
"Once details are out, the people of India will celebrate that not a single sensitive interest of our farmers or any stakeholder has been compromised," Mr. Goyal said of the proposed agreement with the United States. "On the contrary, India will stand at a very strong comparative advantage," he added.
The minister did not release the terms of the deal, and the reports of his speech do not say what stage the negotiations have reached or when an agreement might be signed. His assurance therefore rests on a text the public has not yet seen.
Mr. Goyal defended India's wider record on trade pacts. He said India has signed nine trade agreements covering 38 developed countries, and that these give preferential access to economies with a combined gross domestic product of about 60 trillion dollars. He contrasted that with about 10 trillion dollars covered by agreements signed before 2014.
Developed countries, he said, have long kept high tariffs on labour-intensive goods, and these act as a barrier to Indian exports. The agreements India has concluded, he argued, help overcome those barriers.
He said India's free trade agreements are meant to do more than open markets or cut tariffs. According to him, they are designed to promote exports by drawing on the country's competitive strengths while protecting sensitive sectors. He also said that none of the agreements India has signed has faced substantive criticism or had any specific flaw identified.
On the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, a 15-country bloc that includes China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and the 10 ASEAN members, Mr. Goyal said India was not involved when it was launched. He added that India had been close to finishing a deal with Australia.
Agriculture and dairy have been among the most sensitive areas in talks between India and the United States. In an earlier statement on an interim trade framework, Mr. Goyal said it expanded export opportunities without concessions on dairy or other sensitive domestic produce. That earlier framework was also described as reducing the United States' reciprocal tariff on Indian exports from 50 per cent to 18 per cent, though the figures were not repeated in Thursday's remarks.
No opposition reaction to Mr. Goyal's latest remarks was available at the time of writing.
Mr. Goyal indicated that the details will become public in due course. Until then, his statements remain assurances, and the content of the deal, including its treatment of farm products, will determine whether they are borne out.
