India is looking forward to have a Free Trade Agreement with Latin American countries Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay known as MERCOSUR.
A Seniour official in the Ministry of Commerce said that the prospects of the FTA depended on the success of the Preferential Trade Agreement signed between the two parties recently. An agreement operationalised from 1st of this month allows 10 to 100 per cent duty exemption on more than 450 items from both regions. The agreement has opened the MERCOSUR market with over 240 million population to the Indian manufacturers.
Major items of exports to MERCOSUR are drugs, pharmaceuticals and fine chemicals, transport equipment, agro chemicals, cotton yarn and cotton and manmade fabrics. The major imports into India from MERCOSUR are soyabean oil, metalliferous ores, metal scrap and non-electrical machinery.
Meanwhile the government is also negotiating for concluding Free Trade Agreements with EU and EFTA countries. The Commerce Ministry has circulated a 'sensitive list' of items of trade, tariff line-wise, to enable the domestic producers to give detailed responses on their concerns over tariff, non tariff, and regulations. India would also have to come up with a list of other items where import tariffs would be brought down to zero in a phased manner.
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