The Hindu : Business : Concerns fully addressed, says Anand Sharma

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Concerns fully addressed, says Anand Sharma

P. S. Suryanarayana

‘The GoM will look into the structural issues of the plantation sector’

Anand Sharma

SINGAPORE: The new trade pact with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is India’s “most ambitious” economic accord with an external player so far. Hailing this, Union Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma on Friday affirmed that the “interests of [India’s] plantation sector have been fully protected.” Its “concerns have been fully addressed,” he said over telephone from Bangkok, where the agreement was signed on Thursday.

Asked if Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had now formed a Group of Ministers (GoM) just to mollify these concerns, Mr. Sharma said: “The GoM will look into the structural issues of the plantation sector and also [into] what more needs to be done to restore and rehabilitate that sector.”

The objective was to “rejuvenate” the entire plantation spectrum and make it “more competitive” in the domestic and global markets. In all, “the considered view” of the Union Cabinet was that the “structural flaws” of this sector, “not related to the India-ASEAN free trade agreement” had to be really “looked into.”

As for the FTA itself, India’s “negative list,” signifying no tariff reductions on imports, covered commodities like rubber, coconut, turmeric, copra, and the like, he said to illustrate how the concerns were met.

In addition, some other plantation-related items were placed in India’s “highly sensitive list” of safeguarded tariff cuts which would not at all lead to a total elimination of import duties.

Updating some aspects of the India-ASEAN FTA, Mr. Sharma said the current trade between them was now of the order of $50 billion.

The combined Gross Domestic Product of the two sides, with a total population of over 1.7 billion, was in excess of $3 trillion.

India would be represented by Ambassador Latha Reddy at Saturday’s exploratory talks in Bangkok for an East Asia-wide economic pact, Mr. Sharma said.

The idea was to fashion a comprehensive partnership among the 10 ASEAN nations and their six dialogue partners, including India and China as also Japan.

He said India, Indonesia, and Australia on Friday discussed ways to “fully re-energise the Doha round” of global trade talks.

The informal ministerial meeting to be held in New Delhi early in September, as part of this process, would bring together a truly “rainbow coalition of the developing and developed countries.”

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