After The India Government Decides Not To Join RCEP, Its Focus Will Be On Bilateral Trade Agreements In 2020.

Since the decision of not joining the RCEP, the India government has shifted its focus to bilateral free trade agreements (FTA), including many years of negotiations that have not yet been completed, such as the India EU free trade agreement (India-EU FTA), which has been negotiated since 2007 but has been shelved for many years. The FTA, which has been signed but not expected, will be revisited.

Piyush Goyal, Minister of Commerce and industry of India, called on India to restart the FTA negotiations with the European Union on many occasions, and stressed that India's industry and services industry is more competitive and more profitable in the development of large markets, especially in India, where many products have export advantages in some EU countries.

India think tank ICRIER researcher Durgesh Rai said that India EU free trade agreement will have significant progress in the next 1 years, but it depends on the EU's demand for agricultural products entering the India market, and how India can reach consensus on key issues such as the expectation of the service industry to expand the EU market. However, it is still too early to say that India has a strong desire to promote the agreement, and the path and structure of future negotiations are also clearer. Besides, the trade negotiations between India and the United States are also the focus of attention, but the problems are more complicated and more political. Expect all sides to reach a final agreement. In October (2019) October, the minister also said that the two countries had settled most trade issues, but had not signed any specific agreements.

The government of India has begun to review the FTA signed by the members of the RCEP negotiations. In September this year, the ASEAN agreed to simplify the review of bilateral trade related parts of the goods with India. According to the participation officials, the updated version of the seventeenth ASEAN economic ministers' chamber of Commerce will be put forward in Ming (2020), which is very important to India, because the India industry has not made full use of FTA from the ASEAN countries, and (2018-19) India's total trade deficit with ASEAN has reached US $21 billion 850 million.

Experts said India should also review the FTA signed with Japan and South Korea, and discuss the signing of FTA with other RCEP members, such as Australia and New Zealand, to reduce the impact of not joining the RCEP.

Biswajit Dhar, Professor of economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, said that India's decision to not join RCEP would lead to a sustained economic downturn, while manufacturing industry was slightly revival. However, rating agencies believe India is still in a crisis. The India government started from the supply side to adopt a simpler currency policy, but the economy is still not improving. Now it is necessary to adopt fiscal policy to break through the difficulties. In 2020, the government must be more cautious in signing any trade agreement.

Goyal minister said that India's experience from RCEP is that any future agreement should not be haste and set a deadline, just like the FTA signed by Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and ASEAN in the 2010 and 2011 years. The future India government will never sign any FTA that is bad for the industry and exporters.