engagement

Cebu, Jan 14 (UNI) India and the ten ASEAN countries considered new initiatives to step up India's economic engagement with South-East Asia and reviewed progress in negotiations on a Free Trade Area (FTA) agreement at their fifth annual summit here today.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pushed for the early conclusion of the India-ASEAN FTA agreement, which he believes is an important initiative to promote greater economic synergy between India and the ASEAN region.

"I shall explore steps that both sides can take to hasten the conclusion of this important agreement," Dr Singh had said before leaving for Cebu from Delhi yesterday.

The Prime Minister arrived on this central Philippines island last night to attend the India-ASEAN Summit today and the 2nd East Asia Summit (EAS) tomorrow as part of India's bid to elevate its engagement with South East Asia and East Asia to qualitatively new levels and give a fresh impetus to its "Look East Policy" launched in 1992.

Dr Singh said India's participation in both the summits was a reflection of the increasing significance of the ''eastern orientation'' of India's foreign policy and its quest for closer engagement with the countries of this region.

External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee was here on January 11 and 12 for the ministerial meetings ahead of the two summits before leaving for a visit to Pakistan.

Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath, on his part, attended the ASEAN Economic Ministers(AEM)-India Consultation Meeting and other preparatory events before the summits.

At the AEM-India meeting, the two sides made a breakthrough on the "negative list" in the proposed India-ASEAN FTA.

"ASEAN agreed to India's proposal for maintaining a Negative List of 490 items with trade coverage not exceeding five per cent by both sides," an official statement had said after the meeting.

"During the meeting, there was a broad consensus among the Ministers that ASEAN-India FTA needs to be concluded early not merely for reasons of bilateral trade but also for larger strategic reasons," the statement said.

The two sides agreed that negotiators would meet and resolve the remaining outstanding issues, preferably by July, 2007.

The meeting took stock of the status of negotiations for the FTA and discussed broad principles pertaining to modalities for tariff elimination and tariff reduction.

Mr Kamal Nath told his counterparts that India had already offered proposals for tariff concessions which provided satisfactory market access to ASEAN countries. He urged ASEAN member-countries to provide reciprocal market access for India's exports. He also expressed concern about ASEAN's Sensitive Lists and urged the member- countries to review and reduce it.

India-ASEAN trade has grown from 6.87 billion dollars in 1999-2000 to 21.3 billion dollars in 2005-06. A target of 30 billion dollars has been set for the current year.

The India-ASEAN Summit and the EAS were originally scheduled for mid-December but Philippines postponed the 12th ASEAN Summit and all other related events because of concerns over an approaching typhoon.

The India-ASEAN summit will also review the ongoing cooperation in various fields, including information technology, economic assistance to less developed CLMV (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam) countries, tourism, transportation and infrastructure.

ASEAN brings together Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Apart from the 10 ASEAN members and India, the EAS will be attended by Japan, China, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.

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