India and Singapore to review CECA

New Delhi, Mar 14: India and Singapore will review the Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA) later this month to identify areas where the two countries can improve bilateral trade and investment flows.

''India will identify reasons for a lower than expected growth rate in investment from Singapore into India and clear any procedural bottlenecks, if required, to aid higher flow of investment,'' said Ministry of Commerce and Industry Special Secretary Gopal Pillai.

The CECA, which came into effect on August 1, 2005, is India's first broad based agreement.

Mr Pillai, who was speaking at a road show on ''India-Singapore: Emerging Opportunities'', organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) here today, said the first review will focus on implementation of CECA and will be a feedback on how to facilitate and diversify trade in various areas that have been identified in the agreement.

Singapore Ministry of Trade and Industry Deputy Secretary Loh Wai Keong said that both countries are committed to reviewing and updating the CECA so that the edge it provides can be further sharpened and it remains relevant to the business communities from both countries.

Mr Pillai said that a number of studies have been done on how to simplify the procedure so that a lot of the unnecessary work can be avoided.

''It is being done under the Special Economic Zones Act and the government's effort is to move this initiative across the entire business sector,'' he said.

He further added that one area of work where Indo-Singapore CECA can be used is the reduction in transaction costs and removal and simplification of procedure.

Bilateral trade between India and Singapore from 2003-2005 nearly doubled with India becoming Singapore's 13th largest trading partner.

India's exports to Singapore touched a figure of 1.4 billion dollars in 2003 and 3.6 billion dollars in 2005. Further, 2005 was a landmark year for investments into India from Singapore being five times higher than in 2004. Singapore's share of India's FIIs doubled from 4.4 per cent to 8.74 per cent last year.

UNI