What are the broad product categories where Indian exports will increase?
There is a fairly large number of items with export potential. Import tariffs on 80 per cent of the goods will be brought down to zero in a phased manner. Steel, some categories of auto components, engineering goods, among others, will have greater access in the Asean market. Today, trade is roughly $16-17 billion for both sides. there is no doubt that some of our tariffs are slightly higher than Asean tariffs, especially bound rates. From the point of view of applied rates, we will not be cutting down much. By and large, most of the industrial goods in India have import duties in the range of 10-12.5 per cent. Some industrial goods even have tariffs of 7.5 per cent. Overall, Indian industry is not comfortable with the FTA as it feels Asean goods will swamp the country… We have had extensive discussions with Indian industry on this issue. Concerns of the industry have been taken into account by the way of putting items in the negative list (which are goods that do not see any duty cu
