Eyeing 2025 polls, Aus aims early completion of trade deal with India

Australia is pushing to conclude the Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA) negotiations with India in the next six-seven months, as the Australian election is scheduled for May 2025, a person aware of the matter said.

“The Australian federal election is slated for May next year. As a result, the government’s focus could be more on local issues, especially February onwards,” the person cited above told Business Standard.

Both nations had signed the interim trade deal, also known as India-Australia Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement (ECTA) that came into force on December 29, 2022.

When ECTA was signed, it was decided that the larger idea would be to use the foundation of the interim deal to resume negotiations on the deeper and more ambitious trade deal – CECA.

Since ECTA was only an interim trade deal, several aspects of a comprehensive trade agreement, including new-age trade issues, did not make it to the deal.

The CECA envisages covering five broad areas, including goods, services, digital trade, government procurement and product-specific rules under the rules of origin chapter.

That apart, both sides have shown interest to include new areas in the comprehensive trade deals, such as competition policy, micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), gender, innovation, agri-tech, critical minerals as well as sports.

Last month, sources on the Australian side had told Business Standard that both sides plan to ‘quickly and extensively’ engage on a comprehensive trade deal ‘as soon as possible’ post general elections in India.

In the proposed comprehensive trade agreement, Australia’s interest lies in areas such as digital trade, government procurement and new market access for exporters.

Indian officials said that finalising the broader trade agreement may not be easy. This is because reaching agreement on certain areas such as giving Australia a greater market access in agriculture and related sectors may be tricky.

As many as nine rounds of talks have taken place since the launch of negotiations for the comprehensive trade deal in February last year.

In March, central government officials had said that ‘significant progress’ has been made in rules of origin track, with agreement on 4,933 lines (88 per cent) of product-specific rules.

Majority articles of the government procurement and digital trade chapter have been cleaned.

The commerce department did not respond to a query sent by Business Standard.

During the financial year 2023-24, merchandise exports to Australia witnessed 14.23 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y) growth at $7.94 billion. Imports saw 15 per cent contraction to $16.16 billion, commerce department data showed.

Both countries are looking at achieving $100 billion bilateral trade over the next few years.