World Trade Organization Organisation Mondiale du Commerce Organización Mundial del Comercio

The process to notify this Agreement to WTO is under way.

11. 
    Could India indicate when it plans to notify these two agreements to WTO?
    

Reply: The agreement with Malaysia will be notified shortly.

The agreement with Thailand covers only 82 tariff lines and is part of the Early Harvest Scheme under the Framework Agreement for Establishing a Free Trade Area between the Republic of India and the Kingdom of Thailand. The FTA is still under negotiation and would be notified to the WTO in due course.

WTO Secretariat's report, page 28, para. 21

Further to these two bilateral agreements, India concluded an FTA with another ASEAN Member, namely Singapore, which has been in force since 2005. These three bilateral agreements do co exist with the FTA that India signed with ASEAN in 2007 and which entered into force in 2010. According to the report, the Indian authorities noted that "tariff concessions under bilateral agreements with countries that also belong to regional agreements to which India is a party, are generally wider and deeper than those under the regional agreements and that the trader can choose which preference to use". Concerning rules of origin, it is stated that these are not necessarily the same in the bilateral and regional agreements but that the "origin criterion for products not covered by specific rules have, by and large, been harmonized".

11. 
    Could India spell out the reasons for having negotiated in parallel bilateral and regional agreements with the ASEAN Members?
    

Reply: Negotiations on the bilateral and regional agreements commenced at different points of time. While the bilateral with Singapore was concluded before the regional agreement with ASEAN gained traction, the other bilateral negotiations took a back seat when the ASEAN negotiations took off. The bilateral agreements are more ambitious than the regional agreement with ASEAN.

11. 
    Could India explain how it ensures that exporters are well informed about their respective advantages, and by which agreement can they benefit most from?
    

Reply: The information on RTAs is published in the official website of the Department of Commerce. In addition, the Department of Commerce organises outreach programmes in different parts of the country in partnership with industry associations and chambers of commerce.

11. 
    Is India working towards further harmonization of its rules of origin applied to bilateral and regional trade agreements?