India's New FTA Strategy: Streamlining Negotiations & SOP for Future Deals

New Delhi, May 21 (PTI) The commerce ministry has prepared a draft comprehensive strategy for negotiating future Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and it will be circulated to certain key departments soon to get their feedback, an official said.

The draft strategy in the form of a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) was recently discussed in a meeting involving former commerce secretaries, senior officers from different ministries and international trade experts.

The aim is to streamline the FTA negotiation processes as several trading partners of India are coming forward for trade pacts.

This SOP is designed to ensure thorough analysis, meticulous background work, and systematic reporting throughout the negotiation phases, the official said adding it would also include structured interactions with various ministries and stakeholders both before and after negotiation rounds.

"Our SOP draft is ready. We have presented that in the meeting and now some more improvement is required. It will be circulated to core ministries in about a month," the government official said.

It was discussed during a two-day 'Chintan Shivir' on May 16-17 at Neemrana, Rajasthan.

"What should be our strategy going forward? Should we do more FTAs" How to identify FTA countries. What should be our views on new issues like labour, and environment? We have made an internal SOP so that when we negotiate an FTA then what should be the process, what kind of analysis should be there, what kind of background work, research, and what kind of reports should we make after every round of FTA talks," the official said.

After doing several agreements, "now we have got this experience, we want to codify that," the official added.

In the Chintan Shivir, various other issues were also discussed, including India's trade strategy and vision 2047; economic assessment and modelling of FTAs; inclusion of new disciplines into FTAs such as labour, environment, gender, and indigenous people; services and digital trade.

A separate session was also organised on leveraging India's FTAs to address new forms/kinds of measures like CBAM (Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism), supply chain disruptions, critical minerals, and artificial intelligence.

India is negotiating trade pacts with the UK, the EU (European Union), Peru, and a comprehensive trade deal with Australia. It is also in talks with the Eurasian Economic Union for a trade agreement.

India's goods and services exports in 2023-24 reached an all-time high of USD 778.2 billion, up 0.23 per cent from USD 776.4 billion in 2022-23.

The country has inked trade pacts with Mauritius, the UAE, Australia and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) since 2021.