Next round of RCEP meet from tomorrow in Myanmar

Senior officials of the 16-member RCEP, including India and China, will meet tomorrow in Myanmar to provide impetus to the negotiations on the mega trade deal.

The deal aims to cover goods and services, investments, economic and technical cooperation, competition and intellectual property.

The ninth round of talks, to be held on August 3-7, on Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement will follow the recent ministerial level meet that concluded in Kuala Lumpur.

“Senior officials of the Commerce Ministry will attend the week-long meeting in Nay Pyi Taw (Myanmar). Talks are progressing. The minister’s level meeting has given a boost to the negotiations,” an official said.

Issues which are expected to be discussed are inclusion of differential duty concept and non-inclusion of 'ratchet mechanism', among others.

The 16-member bloc comprises 10 ASEAN members and their six free trade agreement partners namely India, China, Japan, Korea, Australia and New Zealand.

Under differential duty concept, duties are imposed unequally upon the same products imported from different countries.

Under the ratchet mechanism, some RCEP members want India to go beyond the current domestic regime in services, providing benefits of future policy liberalisation by removing market access barriers.

The 16 economies account for over a quarter of the world economy, estimated to be more than USD 75 trillion. RCEP negotiations were launched in Phnom Penh in November 2012.

The meeting assumes significance as the pact is targeted to be concluded this year.

According to an industry expert, the RCEP members should keep in mind that they would get a market of 1.2 billion people in India.

RCEP is under negotiations and it is an extremely important institutional process which will have significant consequences for partners in the agreement.

Such trade pacts would help India increase its share in the global trade. India is aiming to increase its share to 3.5 per cent by 2020 from the current 2 per cent.