Switzerland wants India to restart trade talks with EFTA
Switzerland on Thursday urged India to resume talks on the stalled India-EFTA free trade agreement with an aim to reinvigorate bilateral trade between the world’s fastest growing large economy and the EFTA members. “We hope that a new strategic outlook takes place in India, and we resume the negotiations. From our side, it’s a keen interest. Since India is becoming more and more important country, we would hope that we get into a negotiating mode. Switzerland is ready,” said Linus von Castelmur, Ambassador of Switzerland to India. Underscoring that Switzerland always wishes to be India’s natural trade partner, Castelmur said after the new government took charge in May 2014, Swiss Economic Affairs Minister Johann N Schneider- Ammann visited India and expressed Switzerland’s keen interest to resume the negotiations in his meeting with Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. India’s negotiation with the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), which has Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein and Switzerland as its members, originally started in 2008, but has been stalled since 2013 over a host of issues. The two trade partners have held over 12 rounds of negotiations so far. China, on the other hand, started the negotiations very strategically and completed the whole process within two years. The Swiss ambassador hoped India could follow a similar strategic path to seal the negotiations at the earliest as it would pave the way for an extended bilateral trade. The India-EFTA negotiations comprise of a wide range of bilateral trade issues including trade in goods, trade facilitation, technical barriers, investment, trade remedies competition, intellectual property rights and legal and horizontal issues. The EFTA bloc wants India to doubly ensure protection of IPR, and data exclusivity, which India doesn’t approve off. The negotiations cover several trade segments including goods (agricultural and industrial products) and services. Bilateral trade between EFTA and India grew almost 11% to $24.5 billion in 2014-15 from $22.1 billion in 2013-14. Besides India, several other countries including Malaysia and the Philippines have completed several rounds of negotiations so far. Last month, the Philippines completed its fifth round of negotiations with the EFTA, and it is expecting to complete the free trade agreement talks within a year. Earlier this week, Malaysia and EFTA members held their sixth rounds of negotiation on March 14-17 in Kuala Lumpur.
March 19, 2016 | 05:20pm IST
to success.