India, EU officials to deliberate on BITA in Brussels tomorrow

New Delhi, Feb 27 (PTI) The chief negotiators of India
and the European Union will hold meetings in Brussels from
Monday with an aim to resolve their differences and conclude
talks on a proposed market opening pact by April.
India's chief negotiator, Commerce Ministry Additional
Secretary P K Chaudhary, and EU Chief Negotiator Ignacio
Garcia Bercero will kick off the three-day meeting from Monday
at the European Union headquarters, a ministry official said.
"The negotiations are very much on track...about 95 per
cent of the work has been completed and on the remaining part,
complex give and take is required...hopefully we will complete
that on time," an official said.
Both the sides are aiming to conclude the talks for BITA,
which would open commerce in goods, services and investment,
by the first half of 2011.
The official said that negotiations are at a crucial
stage as "we are deliberating mainly on reducing the number of
items from the negative list (products on which duties will
not be reduced in the pact)".
After this meeting, EU officials would soon come to New
Delhi for next round of talks.
Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma had recently
said that the talks are in the advance stage.
Both the sides have completed 12 rounds of negotiations.
The talks, which started in 2007, had hit roadblocks many
times as there was a pressure from some of the EU members that
social issues like environment and labour standards should be
covered in the agreement. However, India has been resisting
these efforts.
The two sides recently stepped up efforts to resolve the
pending issues as they want to conclude the negotiations by
year end.
BITA will liberalise trade in services, an area of
strength for India, which faces hurdles like visa problems in
several EU member countries like Germany and Britain.
EU is India's largest trading partner. The bilateral
trade in 2009-10 aggregated to USD 75 billion.
According to an industry chamber report, India-EU trade
is likely to more than double to exceed USD 207 billion by
2015, if the trade pact is formalised.
India has implemented free trade agreements with the
ASEAN, South Korea and Singapore. The country has signed two
major pacts with Japan and Malaysia this month. PTI RR