19th ASEAN India Economic Ministers Meeting 2022
Recently the committee constituted by the India- Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will review the free trade agreement.
Recently the 19th ASEAN-India Economic Affairs Ministers Meeting 2022 was held in Cambodia.
The meeting supported the review of the ASEAN-India Commodities Trade Agreement (AITIGA).
The review will focus on the following aspects-
- How to make it more industry friendly.
- How to be as modern as contemporary business facilitation systems,
- How to streamline tariff and regulatory processes.
- How to enable us to deal with current global and regional challenges, including supply chain bottlenecks.
Concerns related to India-ASEAN trade-
Growing Trade Deficit: Imports from there to India have increased faster than exports to ASEAN countries.
- Restrictive constraints exist on India’s exports to the ASEAN region. These constraints exist particularly in agriculture (sanitary and phytosanitary measures), and the auto sector (technical barriers to trade).
- Indian exporters face strict Rules of Origin (RoO) and compliance rules in ASEAN countries.
- RoOs are the criteria set for determining the country of origin of a product imported into a country.
- ASEAN and India signed the Framework Agreement on Comprehensive Economic Cooperation in 2003. This agreement served as the legal basis for later agreements.
These agreements include:
- Commodities Trade Agreement (2010),
- Service Trade Agreement (2014) and
- Investment Agreement (2014).
All the above agreements have resulted in the formation of the ASEAN-India Free Trade Area (AIFTA). Trade between India and the ASEAN region has reached $98.39 billion (2021- 2022).
Source – The Hindu
