India and Australia Bilateral Trade Relations
In FY 2011, India exported $4.04 billion to Australia, while $8.24 billion was imported from Australia.
- Major items exported to Australia included petroleum products, medicines, polished diamonds, gold jewellery, apparel, etc. whereas mainly coal, liquid nitrogen gas (LNG), alumina and non-monetary gold were imported from Australia.
- Exports made by India in the services sector included travel, telecommunications and computers, government and financial services, etc. whereas service sector imports from Australia mainly consisted of education and private travel.
- In the year 2020, India was Australia’s seventh largest trading partner and sixth largest export destination, mainly due to trade in coal and international education.
Difference between CECA and CEPA:
- CECA stands for ‘Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement’, while CEPA stands for ‘Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement’.
- The major “technical” difference between a CECA and CEPA is that CECA involve only “tariff reduction/elimination in a phased manner on listed/all items except the negative list and tariff rate quota (TRQ) items.
- Under the ‘Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement’ (CEPA), trade in services, investment and ‘other areas of economic partnership’ are also included.
- Therefore, CEPA is more comprehensive, and has a greater scope, than the ‘Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement’ (CECA).
- Usually, a ‘Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement’ (CECA) is signed with a country first and then talks for a ‘Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement’ (CEPA) are initiated.
Source – The Hindu
