India plans to hold bilateral talks to further advance FTA negotiations with G20 member countries on the sidelines of the upcoming G20 meet in Jaipur next week.

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While three earlier meetings of the Trade and Investment Working Group (TIWG) had taken place in Mumbai, Bangalore and Kewadia, the next meeting will now be held in Jaipur on 21st and 22nd August. It will be followed by the Trade and Investment Ministers Meeting (TIMM) on 24th and 25th August, where the focus will be on the ministerial statement on trade and investment issues on 25th August.

Commerce Secretary Sunil Barthwal said that the meeting will be useful in conducting bilateral meets for ongoing FTA talks as ministers from 27 nations, the European Union's Executive Vice President and Director General of Trade will also be present.

While five rounds of negotiations have taken place so far for the proposed India-EU FTA, the 12th round of India-UK FTA negotiations is underway till 25th August and 19 out of 26 chapters have been finalised till now.

Stating that the US Trade Representative Katherine Tai will attend G20 with a focus on ministerial agenda, the Commerce Secretary said that if at all a bilateral meeting happens on the sidelines of the event it will witness discussions on the issues which were taken up during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the US in June this year.

Barthwal said that follow ups are also likely to take place in the Trade Policy forum with the US and on the India-EU TTC (Trade and Technology Council), and the focus will be on increasing resilience and increasing India's participation in global value chains apart from discussion on non-tariff barriers both bilaterally as well as multilaterally.

Barthwal pointed out that WTO reform is one of the priority issues under G20, and separate discussions will take place ahead of the WTO MC13 slated for February 2024. It's also likely that a phased compliance of CBAM and India-Russia trade will also be taken up for deliberation during the meet, after which the trade ministers are slated to participate in the B20 meeting in Delhi.

DPIIT Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh said that B20 will convey its recommendations to G20 for various sectors. Pointing to confirmed participation of global CEOs of Mastercard, IBM, Adobe, BP, HSBC and the Chairman of Rothschild among others; he said that requests for one-to-one meetings have been received from several companies.

G20 nations comprise 65 percent of the world population, 78 percent of global trade and over 80 percent of the global GDP.

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First Published:Aug 18, 2023 6:56 PM IST