India, Asean to negotiate trade pact on Nov 18

New Delhi, Oct 16: India will start fresh round of talks for a free trade pact with the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) from November 18 while offering a list of 560 items in the negative list, Commerce Secretary G K Pillai said here today.

Earlier, India had proposed over 1,400 items to remain outside the ambit of tariff reductions. This had stalled the progress in negotiating the trade pact.

In addition, Mr Pillai said negotiations with the European Union for the trade, investment and services agreement would be completed in two years.

While distributing awards to the exporters of the northern region, Mr Pillai expected that the Indian engineering exports may touch 50 billion dollars by the year 2010.

He promised of reducing the transaction costs being faced by the exporters in an attempt to achieve better export performance in the years to come.

Engineering Export Promotion Council (EEPC) Chairman Rakesh Shah said total VAT refund is restricted to 100 per cent Export Oriented Units (EoUs) which is a matter of serious concern.

We are targetting a 1.5 per cent share in the global trade by 2009-10, he said adding that they are eyeing Indian engineering exports to touch 23 billion dollars by the end of the next fiscal from the curent figure of 20 billion dollars.

Some of the companies which were awarded on the occasion were BHEL, Ircon, PEC Ltd, Hero Exports and others.

Besides, EEPC has launched a showroom and warehouse facility known as India Engineering Centre in Johannesburg to boost exports.

UNI