The Hindu : Business : India-Brazil-SACU trade triangle soon

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Sep 08, 2009
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

Business

Business

India-Brazil-SACU trade triangle soon

Special Correspondent

This will be in addition to the recently signed ASEAN-India pact, says Anand Sharma

Joint working group to prepare draft framework treaty for PTA
Report on the progress of SACU to be presented in November

NEW DELHI: After having led the way for re-energising of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Doha Round negotiations, India is now on the verge of forming yet another ‘formidable trading triangle’ consisting of Brazil, India and South African Customs Union (SACU) to fully accelerate the South-South engagement.

After a successful tour of South Africa recently and the recent WTO engagement, the Union Commerce and Industry Minister, Anand Sharma, has now turned his energies to make this new ‘trade triangle’ a reality with a long-term strategic view and cash in on the tremendous goodwill and respect that India commands in the African world.

“We need investments to fuel our economic growth and generate resources. The resources are with the rich continents. There is also a huge potential for energy and minerals in these economies and India needs to integrate itself with them. My recent visit to South Africa provided an opportunity to form a new trade and economic alliance. This would be in addition to the recently signed ASEAN-India pact that has opened to us a $3 trillion economy,” Mr. Sharma said.

Mr. Sharma said after his interaction with the leaders of the African nations, it was decided to put SACU on fast track. Angola has almost agreed to be part of SACU and Namibia is almost in. “We are hopeful that after the India, Brazil, South Africa (IBSA) summit in November, where a report on the progress on SACU has to be presented, we will be able to form a new trade triangle with important countries such as Brazil and African nations,” he said. Members of SACU include Botswana, Lesotho, South Africa and Swaziland. SACU nations have a common custom tariff policy.

As for India and SACU, a joint working group (JWG) consisting of government representatives from both sides was set up to examine the proposal to prepare a draft framework treaty for the Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA) between India and SACU countries. In a meeting of JWG held in Namibia on September 6-7, 2004, the draft framework agreement was finalised. Both sides have agreed that a comprehensive Free Trade Agreement within a reasonable time and in the interim, a limited scope agreement providing for exchange of tariff concessions on select list of products between India and SACU would give further impetus to bilateral trade.

Brazil had, in 2007, floated the idea of IBSA forum which links India, Brazil and South Africa together eventually paving the way for a bigger economic space eventually leading to forming of a big economic space with the South American common market, Mercosur and SACU. This is now all set to become a reality and put in place another formidable trading block.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Business

News Update

Stories in this Section