ISDS Case Map
ASEAN
The United States is beginning to lay the initial groundwork for talks to forge a free trade agreement with Southeast Asia, ahead of President Barack Obama’s maiden trip to the region.
An influential Republican Senator has announced to introduce a legislation in US Senate next week for free trade agreement negotiations between the United States and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Enthused by the likely gains from the recently signed ASEAN-India Free Trade Agreement (FTA), India and Thailand are all set to expand their FTA pact beyond goods to new areas of services and investments with focus on further consolidating their economic ties.
Indonesia is upbeat on its growing trade with China, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand following plans to set up Free Trade Area (FTA) pacts with those countries under the Association of Southeast Asia Nations (Asean) agreement and by bilateral agreements, a senior official at the Indonesian Trade Ministry said here on Monday.
CPM chooses a unique way to express its reservation over Free Trade Agreement with ASEAN in Kerala. The party activists formed a 550 km human chain on a rainy Friday evening to register their protest against the pact scheduled to be effective from January, 2010.
Kerala’s rubber sector, in particular, will vanish if the free import of rubber from outside India under the FTA is allowed. Pepper, coconut, plantation products and similar commodities which form the backbone of Kerala’s economy will die, too.
Amid criticism by political rivals and apprehensions that the recently signed free trade agreement (FTA) with the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) would be detrimental to India’s agricultural and fisheries sectors, the government today said such fears had no basis.
"We are apprehensive about the agreement with Asean. This agreement is not going to protect Kerala farmers. Majority of our farmers survive on small scale farming and they can't compete when the markets open up," Kerala's Agriculture Minister Mullakkara Ratnakaran told Bernama in a telephone interview Thursday.
In a rare move, India's Union government has launched an ‘Appeal to the People of Kerala’ advertisement campaign to counter the ‘false propaganda’ against the Indo-ASEAN free trade agreement.
The Kerala unit of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPM, is pulling out all the stops to ensure the success of a planned statewide human chain on 2 October to protest a free trade agreement between India and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
