After working for 15 years, India secured a free trade agreement on Sunday with European Free Trade Association (EFTA) comprising 4 nations, Singapore, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein. The meeting regarding the India-EFTA trade agreement was co-chaired in New Delhi by Piyush Goyal, the Union minister of business and industry. The agreement addresses a number of topics, such as the encouragement of investment, intellectual property rights, and commerce in commodities. With 40 nations, EFTA already has 29 free trade agreements.
According to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the India-EFTA trade deal, represents our common commitment to free, open, and equitable trade. Additionally, he stated that new avenues for cooperation will be made possible by the EFTA countries’ worldwide leadership in innovation and R&D in a variety of fields, including digital trade, pharmaceuticals and banking and financial services.
India had requested that the member nations of the bloc commit $50 billion in investments during the first ten years of the agreement’s implementation and an additional $50 billion over the following five years. The goal was to enable the creation of one million direct employment in India through these investments.
There will be a duty reduction under the agreement. It is anticipated to benefit almost all industries connected with India’s export business. The Union Cabinet gave its approval on March 7 and the agreement, officially known as the Trade and Economic Partnership Agreement (TEPA), was then signed.
The agreement has 14 chapters, including trade in goods, rules of origin, intellectual property rights (IPRs), trade in services, investment promotion and cooperation, government procurement, technical barriers to trade, and trade facilitation.
