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Review of India-ASEAN trade in goods agreement to help realise trade potential: Puri
Aug-05-2020

The Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Hardeep Singh Puri has said that immediate review of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-India trade in goods agreement would help realise the true bilateral trade potential between India and the 10-member Southeast Asian bloc. It will also contribute to the realisation of 2020 trade target of $200 billion set by both parties. He noted that the review of the India-ASEAN trade in goods agreement is still pending.

According to the minister, both India and ASEAN need to redouble their efforts towards strengthening cooperation in services sectors such as e-commerce, IT-enabled services, financial services, banking and tourism. He said ‘I think we have to find ways and means of ensuring that the ASEAN economies are equally welcoming of and receptive to exports from India as we are to imports from the ASEAN economies.’ He also highlighted that a significant component of the bilateral trade engagement between India and the ASEAN countries is in the medium and high technology-intensive trade. He noted that in 2018, 40.6 percent of imports and 28.8 percent of exports from India to ASEAN were in this product category.

Puri further said India's annual trade deficit with ASEAN is close to $24 billion. He said ‘the reasons are multiple and I would like in the coming months and years to see this trade deficit narrowed.’ He also pointed out that there is a range of non-tariff barriers, import regulations, quotas and export taxes. Expressing confidence that India and the ASEAN region will emerge much stronger by overcoming challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, he said ‘we need to prepare for the fact that this may not be the last public health emergency faced by us.’

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