A senior Australian diplomat in Chennai said that Canberra would welcome the possibility of entering a Free Trade Agreement with India, but that was not possible “principally because of the importance of the agricultural sector to India and the various protections that are extended over it that makes it impossible for India to put a good offer on the table.”
The official added that, in contrast, the most important treaty that Australia had signed with China in recent times was an FTA, and that had contributed to an already-robust trading relationship with their “number one trading partner.”
