15th round of India-UK FTA talks to begin in February

NEW DE;LHI : India and the United Kingdom are exploring convenient dates to resume the talks for the proposed Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in early February. The talks for the proposed FTA began in January 2022, a commerce department official said.

As far as the review of the India and ASEAN FTA is concerned, the next round of meeting is scheduled from February 10 onwards in Indonesia. 

There is progress in the negotiations, but there are some issues in goods, Additional Commerce Secretary Rajesh Agrawal said.

Regarding the India-Eurasian Economic Union FTA, the commerce department said they are currently in the process of finalising terms of references for the pact. 

Eurasian Economic Union comprises Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia. 

The government is working towards developing a data analytics platform with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) to get better insights on trade data, Commerce Secretary Sunil Barthwal said.

“Whether there is a consistency in our growth or not, whether resiliency has come in our exports or not. These kinds of insights are now coming. We are working in that direction’.There will be a launch of a platform, which will give us better data analytics,” Barthwal told reporters.

A committee, comprising officials from commerce and finance ministries, has been formed to create a mechanism for publishing consistent and accurate data, following calculation errors in gold import data.

 The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) officials held a stakeholder consultation on Wednesday with private equity, venture capital and pension funds to discuss foreign direct reforms in the country.  

The meeting comes against the backdrop of the industry department targeting annual foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows worth $100 billion, on an average for the next five years. 

In the last five years, the annual average was $70 billion.FDI has been falling over the last few years.