India, Australia add 15 new areas for talks on comprehensive trade deal

Collaboration in space, mining and sports are among 15 new areas mutually identified by India and Australia for negotiations under the comprehensive free trade agreement, a senior government official said on Thursday.

For the first time, these new segments would become part of a trade pact being negotiated by India.

Additional Secretary in the Department of Commerce Rajesh Agrawal said that the third round of talks for the proposed comprehensive economic cooperation agreement (CECA) will end on June 16 and the next round of talks is scheduled in July.

India and Australia have already implemented an interim trade pact in December last year and now negotiations are underway to expand the base of that pact for a CECA.

"In addition to five areas which we had committed and which will be taken up under CECA, there are 15 new areas where mutual interest has been shown by both sides," Agrawal told reporters here.

The official teams on both sides are discussing these areas to finalise the scope of discussions and cooperation that can be taken up in these areas, he said.

"Some of these are very new areas like space and sports, which we have not done (earlier) in any FTA (free trade agreement) till now. These are under discussion and we will see how it evolves," he added.

These areas may also include mining and defence collaboration.

On Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF), he said that India has observer status on the trade pillar and it is observing the developments "very" closely.

IPEF was launched jointly by the US and other partner countries of the Indo-Pacific region on May 23 last year in Tokyo.

The framework is structured around four pillars relating to trade, supply chains, clean economy and fair economy (issues like tax and anti-corruption). India has joined all the pillars except the trade one.

Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Fiji, India, Indonesia, Japan, Republic of Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, the US and Vietnam are members of the bloc.

Members of the 14-nation bloc IPEF have 'substantially' concluded the negotiations on the supply chains agreement.

All the member countries are taking internal approvals on this agreement so that it can be operationalised latest by October.

In addition, he said that talks on a clean economy and fair economy are progressing well and the next round of talks are in July.

"We hope that with another three rounds of negotiations on these two pillars, we will be good to close the negotiations hopefully by November 2023," Agrawal said.

On the proposed trade agreement between India and the UK, Joint Secretary in the department Nidhi Mani Tripathi said that talks are progressing and both sides are jointly trying to move forward in these negotiations.

The 10th round of talks concluded on June 9 and negotiations for 14 chapters out of 26 are substantially closed.

She also said that the fifth round of talks for the India-EU trade agreement is scheduled from June 15-27 in India.

Further India and Canada have concluded the 7th round of talks for such an agreement and both sides are hopeful to conclude the negotiations at an early date.

The 8th round is underway and will conclude on June 16.