RCEP trade ministers to meet in Bangkok today

Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal will attend the seventh RCEP Ministerial Meeting, East Asia Economic Ministers Summit and 16th ASEAN India Economic Ministers meeting being held in Bangkok from 8-10 September.

New Delhi: Trade ministers of 16 countries, including India and Japan, which are negotiating mega free trade agreement RCEP, will hold a crucial meeting in Bangkok on September 8 to take stock of the negotiations.

Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal will attend the seventh RCEP Ministerial Meeting, East Asia Economic Ministers Summit and 16th ASEAN India Economic Ministers meeting being held in Bangkok from 8-10 September, an official statement said on Friday.

The meetings will be attended by economic ministers and senior leaders of ten ASEAN member countries and eight east asia summit countries, it said.

The RCEP agreement is being negotiated among 10 ASEAN members (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam) and Australia, China, India, Japan, Korea and New Zealand.

The negotiations for the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) has reached a fundamental phase as the member countries are targeting to conclude the talks by November.

So far, 27 rounds of talks have been held, but the member countries are yet to arrive at the number of goods over which import duties will be eliminated or significantly reduced.

Indian industry has raised concerns over the presence of China in the grouping with which India has a trade deficit of over USD 50 billion. Various sectors, including dairy, metals, electronics, chemicals, and textiles have urged the government to not agree on duty cut in these segments.

India has registered trade deficit in 2018-19 with as many as 11 RCEP member countries, including China, South Korea and Australia.

The trade agreement aims to cover issues related to goods, services, investments, economic and technical cooperation, competition and intellectual property rights.

The commerce ministry also gave a detailed presentation on the progress of the proposed RCEP to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday.

Further, the commerce ministry statement said that Goyal is also scheduled to hold bilateral meetings with his counterparts from Japan, Singapore, China, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, Philippines, Thailand and Russia.

India's bilateral trade jumped threefold from USD 21 billion in 2005-06 to USD 96.7 billion in 2018-19 with ASEAN.

The foreign direct investment inflows into India from ASEAN between April 2018 to March 2019 was about USD 16.41 billion, which is about 36.98 per cent of the total flow into India.