9.4. Important International Trade Agreements and Relevant Regional Global Significant for India

♤ Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Agreement among ASEAN + Six FTA Partners (Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand):

o RCEP is proposed regional Free Trade agreement whose members combined account for 40 percent of global trade.

o The negotiations in agreement cover a number of areas like trade in goods, services, investment, intellectual property, economic and technical cooperation, competition, e- commerce and legal and institutional issues.

o It aims to achieve high levels of tariff liberalizations in trade of goods. The negotiations will cover all the service sector, and with regard to investment, they will cover all the four pillars – promotion, protection, facilitation and liberalisation.

o Significance to Indian economy

 The RCEP agreement would complement India’s existing free trade agreements

with the ASEAN and some of its member countries.

 Since India is not party to any of the APEC, TTP and TTIP, the membership of RCEP would reduce their potential negative impact on Indian economy.

 India will get closer to ASEAN economy which will align with the objective of India’s