India's revamped FTA strategy

Its focus is at odds with the country's imperative of having an employment-promoting trade policy

Recent statements from the commerce ministry have indicated that India is going to revamp its Free Trade Agreement (FTA) strategy and that FTA negotiations would be expedited towards early conclusion. The news is encouraging given that India has not signed any major FTA in the last 10 years, when the cumulative number of regional trade agreements in force globally has increased from 224 to 350. India signed its last trade agreement, a Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA) with Malaysia in 2011. Since then only a comprehensive economic cooperation and partnership agreement, covering a small number of commodities, was signed with