India, Japan conclude negotiations on CEPA

Tokyo, Oct 25 (PTI) In a breakthrough in bilateral
economic relations, India and Japan Monday successfully
concluded negotiations for a CEPA pact that will liberalise
trade between them, even as Indian Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh promised to carry forward reforms of taxes, financial
sector and capital markets.
The progress in the talks for a Comprehensive Economic
Partnership Agreement (CEPA) came at the end of discussions
between Singh and his Japanese counterpart Naota Kan which
covered a wide range of subjects.
"Having confirmed the progress made thus far in our
work, we now declare the successful conclusion of negotiations
for the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement... We
expressed our intention that the India-Japan CEPA will be
signed at the earliest at Ministerial level, on completion of
necessary formalities by both sides," a joint declaration
signed by the two leaders said.
They said the CEPA will be truly comprehensive by
including fields that range from Trade in Goods, Investment,
Trade in Services, and Movement of Natural Persons to
Intellectual Property, Competition, Improvement of the
Business Environment, Bilateral Cooperation and so forth.
"We also expressed our determination to put the
India-Japan CEPA into effect soon after its signing and the
completion of necessary procedures in each country," the
declaration said.
Singh said the "historic achievement" would open up
new business opportunities and lead to a "quantum increase" in
trade and investment flows between the two countries.
Earlier in the day, addressing the captains of
Japanese industry and business, Singh said his government was
determined to continue the economic reforms to create a
favourable investment environment and facilitate higher
capital inflows.
He promised to push the reform of both direct and
indirect taxes with the aim of unifying indirect taxes into a
single Goods and Services Tax in due course.
At their meeting, Singh and Kan noted that Japanese
Foreign Direct Investment into India had witnessed an
increase.
However, the Indian Prime Minister said the economic
cooperation had not reached the threshold despite the huge
opportunities being offered by India where economy was growing
rapidly.
Underlining that he was not underestimating "many
challenges" that are faced in achieving such high level of
growth, he said "we need to close the infrastructure deficit,
especially in the power, transport and communication sectors."
"This is a major constraint on our development and we
will give high priority to infrastructure development in the
years ahead," he said, adding during India's next five-year
plan from 2012 to 2017 "we envisage financial outlays of over
one trillion US dollars on infrastructure projects."