Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal will visit Canada next month to speed up the negotiations on the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA).

“I will meet the Minister of International Trade of Canada to find ways to speed up the talks,” Goyal said at the World Intellectual Property Day celebrations. A business delegation will also be accompanying the minister to Canada.

At the event the minister also announced that the fee for registering any Intellectual Property (IP) related to sports would be eliminated for the next three years. “Any IP, whether it’s trademark, copyright, patent, design, traditional knowledge, or a Geographical Indication (GI) product, for three years, as a special drive to promote sports, the fees will be zero,” he said at the event whose theme was IP and Sports.

It is the third attempt by India and Canada to negotiate the CEPA. The negotiations on CEPA with Canada were first started in 2010 but could not make much progress. The talks were relaunched in March 2022 but abandoned in August-September of 2023 due to political differences. 

Terms of reference

The Terms of Reference (ToR) of CEPA were signed in March during the visit of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to India and a deadline of 2026-end was fixed to conclude the negotiations. The first round of talks of the trade agreement were held from March 9 to March 20.

Through the agreement India and Canada are aiming to double their bilateral trade to $ 50 billion by 2030.

Goyal said the Minister in-charge of international trade negotiations of Chile would be visiting India from the 12th of next month. India and Chile had launched negotiations on CEPA in April last year and so far four rounds of negotiations have been held. The last round of talks were held from 1-5 December last year.

The minister conceded that there has been a pause in negotiations on FTA with the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) due to war in West Asia. “But we will open up all of the other four markets also – Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. “ India already has  CEPA with the two other GCC members – United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Oman. 

The ToR for FTA with GCC was signed in early February and the first round of talks were held later that month.

“We are talking to Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) led by Russia, South African Customs Union (SACU) which includes South Africa and its neighboring countries. We are updating our Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA) with Brazil and other Mercosur countries,” Goyal said.

“The nine FTAs the Modi government has done cover almost two-third of the global economy, two-third of global trade. The world wants to do business with us,” he added.