India and Australia have decided to expand the negotiations on Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement by including 15 more areas like agri-tech, critical minerals, space and sports which have never been part of any trade deal that India has been part of, a senior official said Thursday.

The third round of negotiations on the comprehensive trade agreement with Australia are currently under way and end on June 16. The next round of talks are scheduled for July, Additional secretary in the department of commerce Rajesh Agrawal said.

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India and Australia have already implemented an interim trade pact (Economic and Cooperation Agreement) in December last year and now negotiations are underway to expand it and sign a CECA.

“In addition to five areas which we had committed and which will be taken up under CECA, there are 15 new areas where mutual interest have been shown by both sides,” Agrawal told reporters here.

Other areas where India and Australia have expressed interest in expanding are MSMEs, gender innovation and competition policy.

On Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF), he said that India has an observer status on the trade pillar and it is observing the developments “very” closely.

IPEF was launched jointly by the US and other partner countries of the Indo-Pacific region on May 23 last year in Tokyo.

The framework is structured around four pillars relating to trade, supply chains, clean economy and fair economy (issues like tax and anti-corruption). India has joined all the pillars except the trade one.

Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Fiji, India, Indonesia, Japan, Republic of Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, the US and Vietnam are members of the bloc.

Members of the 14-nation bloc IPEF have ‘substantially’ concluded the negotiations on the supply chains agreement.

All the member countries are taking internal approvals on this agreement, so that it can be operationalised latest by October.

In addition, he said that talks on clean economy and fair economy are progressing well and the next round of talks are in July.

“We hope that with another three rounds of negotiations on these two pillars, we will be good to close the negotiations hopefully by November 2023,” Agrawal said.

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On the proposed trade agreement between India and the UK, Joint Secretary in the department Nidhi Mani Tripathi said that good progress has been made and both the sides are jointly trying to move forward in these negotiations.

The 10th round of talks concluded on June 9 and negotiations for 14 chapters out of 26 are substantially closed.

She also said that the fifth round of talks for the India-EU trade agreement is scheduled from June 15-27 in India.

Eighth round of negotiations on India-Canada Comprehensive Partnership Agreement are currently underway and the both sides are trying to conclude an interim agreement at the earliest.