Is the CII concerned about the fallout of such agreements on domestic industry?
Let me remind ourselves that the Doha declaration actually had in it a clause which all of us signed, which committed India to eliminate all tariffs over a period of time on non-agricultural trade. In other words, India is committed in an undefined long term to bring down the tariff to zero level. The question is when do we do this? We can do that when we are not going to be disadvantaged with another country in terms of competitive abilities. CII has been consistently recommending that we should bring down tariffs, but put the internal reforms in place. It has to go hand-in-hand. A typical case is one of taxation. If you cannot create one market in India, even with VAT, it will be nave to talk of one market with another country. On regional agreements, we must move forward. We cannot lose time for multilateral systems. RTAs are unavoidable. As for FTAs, it is necessary. We must have them predominantly with countries that have complementary competencies and not too much of overlapping
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