Free trade agreement with New Zealand soon: Anand Sharma
May 10th, 2011 - 10:15 pm ICT by IANSNew Delhi, May 10 (IANS) India expects to conclude a free trade agreement (FTA) with New Zealand in a time-frame of eight to 10 months, Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma said Tuesday.
“The FTA will be our single most important bilateral platform for increasing trade. More open access and investment flows can come from the FTA,” said Sharma in an official statement, after concluding two days of talks in New Zealand with his counterpart Tim Groser on trade and economic relationship between the two countries.
According to Sharma, the proposed FTA was a logical extension of India’s “Look East” policy.
During the talks, Sharma also emphasised upon the trade complementarities in the agricultural sector and stressed upon deepening the relationship between the two countries in the services trade, bilateral investment, innovation and technology transfer.
He indicated the service sector constituted a major portion of India’s GDP as well as exports and consequently India hoped that New Zealand would provide a growing market for India’s IT enabled service sector.
Sharma also identified financial services and tourism as promising areas of bilateral cooperation and called for a more liberalised regime to be put in place to allow greater inter-firm mobility.
Both the ministers noted that the economic linkages between the two countries are much below potential, given the friendly and conducive policy regime between the two countries.
Sharma also invited cooperation in the fields of pharmaceuticals, engineering goods, textiles, spice trade and film making.
He specifically stressed that the Indian pharmaceutical industry has established itself in world markets for its high quality, at the same time ensuring availability of generics in a manner that makes health care more affordable for vulnerable sections of the world population.
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Tags: agricultural sector, bilateral cooperation, bilateral investment, economic linkages, economic relationship, free trade agreement, fta, groser, indian pharmaceutical industry, industry minister, innovation and technology, investment flows, investment innovation, logical extension, policy regime, promising areas, service sector, spice trade, vulnerable sections, world population