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ASEAN ACCEPTS INDIA’s NEGATIVE LIST KAMAL NATH ATTENDS ASEAN ECONOMIC MINISTERS INDIA CONSULTATION MEETING AT CEBU
Date : 12 Jan 2007
Location : New Dehli
Shri Kamal Nath, Commerce & Industry Minister, participated in AEM-India
Consultation Meeting held at Cebu (Philippines) yesterday. Trade Ministers of
Malaysia, Philippines, Cambodia, Brunei, Lao, Indonesia, Myanmar, Singapore,
Thailand and Vietnam took stock of the current status of negotiations under
India-ASEAN-FTA and discussed broad principles pertaining to modalities for
tariff elimination and tariff reduction.
Shri Kamal Nath mentioned that India had already offered proposal for tariff
concessions which provided satisfactory market access to ASEAN countries. Shri
Nath called upon ASEAN member countries to provide reciprocal market access for
India’s exports. He also expressed concern about ASEAN’s Sensitive Lists and
urged ASEAN to review and reduce it.
ASEAN agreed to India’s proposal for maintaining a Negative List of 490 items
with trade coverage not exceeding 5% by both sides.
During the meeting, there was a broad consensus among the Ministers that
ASEAN-India FTA needs to be concluded early not merely for reasons of bilateral
trade but also for larger strategic reasons. It was agreed that negotiators
would meet and resolve the remaining outstanding issues preferably by July 2007.
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SB/MRS
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