U.S. officials briefed Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on the 12-nation Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), a recent free trade pact that will cover about 40 per cent of global commerce and could lead to trade diversion from India.
After the 9th round of U.S.-India Trade Policy Forum (TPF) meeting, which she co-chaired with U.S. Trade Representative Mike Froman, the Minister said the attempt was to understand the “contours of TPP,” and deflected a question on whether India would like to join it.
“We get to know from the U.S. what really are the substantive parts of the TPP,” she said, adding that she would study the details before making further comments.
Ms. Sitharaman said negotiations on the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), an emerging trade pact among 10 ASEAN countries and six countries that have free trade agreements with the bloc, were progressing well.
“If everything goes fine somewhere in 2016 we should be near an agreement,” she said.
The discussions focused on agriculture, trade and goods and services, investment in manufacturing and intellectual property and both sides “welcomed the substantive progress in promoting bilateral trade and investment since the last TPF meeting in November 2014.”
The Minister said India’s willingness to engage on the contentious issue of intellectual property has led to higher U.S. appreciation of its position. “Indian IPR regime TRIPS compliant,” the Minister said, adding that there were issues that needed to fixed and the government was doing it with the involvement of all stakeholders.
“We invited their active participation even as we were forming the policy. We invited them to ask any number of questions whether to patents or copyrights. We have not left even one question unanswered. So the readiness to talk, the readiness to answer questions has actually helped to remove any apprehensions that they would have had in their minds,” Ms. Sitharaman said.
