India and Canada will hold the first round of negotiations on their Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) in April or May. Currently, both sides are engaged virtually to lay the groundwork, Commerce Secretary Rajesh Agrawal said.
India and Canada signed Terms of Reference (ToR) for their FTA on March 2 and aim to conclude negotiations by the end of this year. Through CEPA both sides aim to double their bilateral trade to $50 billion by 2030. It is the third attempt by both sides for an FTA. Negotiations on CEPA with Canada first started in 2010 but made little progress.
The negotiations relaunched in March 2022 before being abandoned in August-September of 2023 due to political differences. Agrawal said the next meeting for the review of Asean-India Trade in Goods Agreement (AITIGA) would be held on March 30-31. It will be the 12th meeting of the Joint Committee that is spearheading the review process.
Missed review
Last year both sides set a deadline of 2025-end to complete the review but that was missed. The review of AITIGA was agreed to in 2020 but the process actually began with the formation of the Joint Committee in 2022.
The process of ratification of the India-UK Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) and Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) is in progress. The legal texts of the India-European Union Free Trade Agreement and the India-New Zealand trade agreement are being finalised.
India has also signed Terms of Reference for a Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA) with the Philippines and an FTA with Maldives and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).