ISDS Case Map
India
Setting the stage for a quantum jump in economic ties, India and Japan have decided to look at the formation of a free trade area (FTA), with an eye on more than doubling bilateral trade to $10bn.
The global experience on FTAs suggests that regional FTAs (e.g. EU) and those between the North and the South (NAFTA) work. However, South-South FTAs are less inspiring. A key issue is whether the economies of the countries entering into an FTA complement or compete with each other.
Calling for a boost in bilateral trade between India and Mexico, a visiting delegation of Mexican industrialists on Thursday floated the idea of having a Free-Trade Agreement (FTA) between the two countries.
I recall two incidents. One, a meeting with a senior functionary in the Chinese embassy in 2002. His comment: China's main grouse with Pakistan after 9/11 was that they had allowed the US into our backyard. Second, the same year, at a seminar in JNU, a Japanese delegate was explaining why the Japanese were cutting aid to India-India's nuclear explosion was difficult to justify to the paranoid Japanese public.
“To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive,” wrote noted English novelist Robert Louis Stevenson. For me, a free trade agreement (FTA) with China is something similar. A free trade agreement with China could be a final destination and we can travel hopefully to it.
Japan and India took a first step to a possible free trade deal with an agreement to spend a year looking at the effects of a pact on the two major Asian economies.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao today announced the decision of India and China to institute a joint feasibility study on a Free Trade Area (FTA) Agreement between the two countries, having signed a landmark political accord to settle the lingering boundary dispute.
The government of India is set to initial a Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (Bipa) with China with the two pending issues on security and legal jurisdiction being sorted out by the National Security Adviser in the Prime Minister's Office. A free trade agreement, however, looks distant with the domestic industry raising serious concerns.
why is China so keen on an FTA and India less eager?
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao will propose to establish the world's biggest Free Trade Area (FTA) between China and India during talks with the Indian leadership next week.
