ASEAN-India FTA talks concluded

After three years of strenuous talks, negotiations for the free trade agreement (FTA) between Association of South-East Asian Nations (Asean) and India were finally concluded Thursday.

Asean secretary-general, Surin Pitsuwan, said the "last-mile" talks, held today, managed to resolve several contentious issues that had been been holding back the two from reaching an agreement.

"I have been just informed that Asean and India have concluded talks on FTA this morning. This will open tremendous synergies between India's one billion population and our 567 million people," he told Bernama on the sidelines of the Asean Energy Ministers' Meeting here today.

Surin said he was happy the deadlock over the issue of agriculture products from Asean members, which had hindered the success of the talks, had been finally solved.

"The FTA with India is Aseans fourth with a dialogue partner, following Japan, China and South Korea," said Surin, who was optimistic that similar negotiations with Australia and New Zealand could be concluded in the coming months.

Asean's Senior Economic Officials (SEOM) met their counterparts from India during the Asean-India Consultations being held during the 4th Meeting of the 39th SEOM in Brunei.

Surin said the FTA with India would offer vast business potential for both the world's largest democracy and the 10-member regional grouping which aimed to create its own European Union-style single market or Asean Economic Community by 2015.

Trade between India and Asean reached nearly US$20 billion (US$1=RM3.28) last year and is expected to grow to US$30 billion by 2010.

Asean and India had signed a framework agreement on comprehensive economic cooperation in October 2003, and negotiations were supposed to be concluded by June 2006.

The trade pact was initially scheduled to be effective on Jan 1, 2007 but differences over agriculture products remained unresolved until today's meeting.

According to previous reports, negotiations were stalled over India's refusal to roll back tariffs on petroleum, palm oil, pepper, tea and coffee in a bid to protect the domestic sector, while Asean members, especially Indonesia and Malaysia, had been pressing for more access for their palm oil exports to India.

At the initial stage, India, which adopted a free market economy in the early 1990s, issued a long exclusion list of 1,414 products in its bid to protect its sensitive agriculture and textile sectors, but later reduced it to about 560 products.