India offers new reduced tariffs

India today offered new tariff concessions to break the deadlock in free trade negotiations with Asean. The concessions include a revised negative list of 560 goods against the earlier list of 854 items.

The new tariff liberalisation proposes to cut tariffs for 94 per cent of Asean's exports to India, compared to 69 per cent previously.

The revised offer has been made ahead of the preparatory talks for Asean economic ministers meeting next week, Gopal K Pillai, special secretary in the commerce ministry told reporters at Kuala Lumpur.

Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath said discussions for the India-Asean foreign trade agreement (FTA) were likely to conclude by the year-end. Nath has obtained a mandate from the trade and economic relations committee which met today to discuss the India-Asean FTA.

A few months ago, India had trimmed down its negative list from 1,440 last year to 854 items but it was still unacceptable to Asean.

Asean had also rejected India's offer for a tariff rate quota and suggested pruning India's negative list to just 60 items against its offer of 854 items.

Officials said under the new formula, India would offer two lists - one would be a pruned negative list on which there would be no duty cuts while the other would contain items like palm oil and tea, on which the duty cuts would be undertaken over a period of time.

There would be no cuts for the first five years and then during next 10 years the import duty would be reduced gradually to a certain level.