CECA with South Korea likely to be inked by July-end

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New Delhi, May 26 : imports of Korea. Business services and communication services also form a major portion. With Korea ‘s market for IT services projected to reach $11.4 billion in 2008, market access in IT and IT-enabled services would also be crucial for India. Audio-visual, architecture and accountancy are other services of importance to India.

The countries will also exchange their respective final lists on investment and trade in goods. Of the total of around 5,000 tariff lines, India has kept 700-plus in the exclusion list. The main items include auto and auto components, agriculture, fisheries, wines, edible oils, textiles including nylon and polyester as well as items produced by micro, small and medium enterprises like perfumes, soaps and toiletries. An inter-ministerial meeting held here last week gave its green signal to the fourth and final version of the exclusion list, they said.

Earlier this year, commerce and industry minister Kamal Nath had responded to a suggestion by heavy industry minister Santosh Mohan Dev saying the commerce ministry would be very cautious on protecting interests of auto sector and would not offer any concessions to trading partners, including Korea in the auto sector in FTAs.

Unlike in free trade agreements with Asean or some other countries, the concerns on trade in goods are much lesser here as Korea has been less stringent about India ‘s sensitive list. Sources said Korea has given relatively more leeway to India in drawing up the list of items in the exclusion list. The two countries have also agreed to include in the CECA bilateral cooperation pacts in energy, broadcasting, telecom, IT, non-conventional energy, science and technology, tourism, small and medium enterprises, infrastructure, transportation, audio-visual services, pharmaceuticals, healthcare and tourism.