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"Quite honestly, it would be quite difficult, at this point of time for India to imagine doing that kind of a deal with the United States considering its sensitivities in agriculture," US Trade Representatives Susan Schwab said on the sidelines of India-US Summit for Small and Medium Enterprises in Chicago.
India is at advanced stages of negotiations on economic cooperation agreements with the EU, its largest trading partner, and ASEAN.
Commerce Secretary Gopal K Pillai said India's free trade agreement with the European Union encompasses "substantial" trade, but Schwab said the US wants "almost 100 per cent" coverage.
This means, if India desires to have an FTA or economic cooperation agreement, it has to allow a zero duty market for everything, including highly-sensitive agriculture products.
Protecting its subsistent farming from cheap imports has been one of the key areas of concerns for India under the Doha Round of multilateral negotiations for a global trade deal.
Schwab said there was no comparison between her country and the EU when it comes to a free trade pact with India. "EU is not a major agriculture producer, although they do a lot of export of value-added (products). Same thing is with a lot of ASEAN countries," she said.
But the US would closely watch the progress of agreements that India is working on with the EU and ASEAN. "We will see how those (India-EU and India-ASEAN) play out," Schwab said, adding that the US follows quite different approaches to such deals. "At some point in future, we could well do it," she said.
Schwab said since the processes of trade agreements were tedious and difficult, the priority for now was to use the alternative ways to enhance the bilateral trade which was at 41 billion dollars last year.
"Both of us felt that we wanted to do a lot more to expand bilateral trade and investment and to do that there were better ways at this point of time than to start negotiations on a Free Trade Agreement that might take many years," she said.
India has also begun the process of talks for possible deals with the Gulf Cooperation Council and Japan, in the absence of slow movement of a multilateral trade agreement under the World Trade Organisation.
While no formal proposal was mooted from either side, the idea of an India-US FTA has quite often been floated by private sector companies and politicians including some of the Congressmen in America.
As she rejected the possibility of an FTA, the USTR said her country was keen on enhancing trade and investment with India for which the two nations have set up a high-level Trade Policy Forum, co-chaired by their trade ministers.
The Forum, also comprising senior officials of the two countries, held its meeting here yesterday and reviewed a number of issues and bottlenecks that need to be removed for stepping up trade. The India co-chair is held by ICRIER Chairperson Isher Judge Ahluwalia.
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RatingBy allowing zero duty market to USA products the Indian products will become uncompetitive. Recently the Mexican Farmers were agitating on the farm subsidy extended to the US farmers which were rendering Mexican farm product un competitive. Same way by extending duty exemption to USA products Indian product will also become uncompetitive. As it is so many farmers are committing suicide for not able to sell their product for good price and not able to repay their loans they take to grow their produts. Unless USA has its vested interest they will never come to India for such treaty or pacts. Hence India should tread the path of caution and care whenever dealing on any pacts or agreements with USA.
quite RIGHT, India must not be given a dinner on a platter, India does not deserev this yet.India has to reign back on unfair subsidies,uncompetitive handouts and lazy sops.India must procced with with deep rooted and sweeping REFORMS, to start must rid off the archiac Law Labour Laws that date back to 17th Century and then cur back on subsisdies for Rich farmers, for the sake of political vote bank.Urge the Govt to Reform and implement more Free markrt policies, so that poor and the destitute could benefit from these economic growth,and make the economy more efficient and competetitive, by closing down all the loss making PUS's.
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