Chennai: The 16 members of RCEP group including India and China agreed to intensify the ongoing negotiations for a proposed mega trade agreement to resolve all issues and conclude the talks this year.
The progress of negotiations were reviewed during a meeting of all the Trade Ministers of 16 countries in Cambodia, which concluded Saturday.
“To ensure that progress is made towards meeting the leaders’ target for conclusion in 2019, the Ministers agreed to intensify engagement for the remaining of the year, including by convening more intersessional meetings,” the Commerce Ministry said quoting a joint statement issued after the meeting.
The meeting, which was chaired by Chutima Bunyapraphasara, Acting Minister of Commerce of Thailand, reviewed the developments since the second RCEP Summit on 14 November 2018, in Singapore. Commerce and Industry Minister Suresh Prabhu attended the meeting.
The statement also said all the Ministers resolved to exert utmost effort to achieve the target of concluding the negotiations this year.
More work is to be done
The leaders commended the RCEP Trade Negotiating Committee for the good progress made to date on both market access and text-based negotiations but at the ‘same time recognised that more work still needs to be done to advance both aspects of the negotiations’, it said.
It also urged the member countries to address specific sensitivities, while working towards achieving commercially meaningful outcomes.
The Ministers reiterated that it is the collective responsibility of all the members to ensure progress by overcoming negotiation challenges and finding resolution to the remaining issues through constructive engagement.
Worried farmers
Earlier, some farmer organisations and experts urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi that the proposed mega-trade deal RCEP should not place any obligation on India with respect to intellectual property (IP) on seed and planting materials.
In a letter to the PM, 41 farmer organisations and 12 experts said certain RCEP members are demanding a tighter IPR regime in the form of insistence on provisions on rights in plant varieties.
“It is demanded by some RCEP-participating countries that such plant variety protection (PVP) shall provide for the IP protection of all plant genera and species by an effective PVP system, which is consistent with the 1991 Act of the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants,” the letter said.
A mega FTA that undermines farmers’ seed freedoms in a diverse country is unacceptable, it added.
“Countries have complete freedom to adopt a system suitable to their agricultural condition and needs. Nothing in the RCEP negotiations should affect and limit this freedom,” it added.
What is it?
The 16-member Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) bloc aims to cover among the issues related to goods, services, investments, economic and technical cooperation, competition and intellectual property rights.
It includes 10 countries of ASEAN (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam) and their six free trade pact partners namely Australia, China, India, Japan, Korea and New Zealand.
The negotiations have entered the sixth year. The last round was held in February in Indonesia. RCEP members want India to eliminate or significantly reduce customs duties on maximum number of goods it traded with them.
India’s huge domestic market provides immense opportunity of exports for RCEP countries. But, lower level of ambitions in services and investments, a key area of interest for India, does not augur well for the agreement that seeks to be comprehensive in nature.
| ‘Felxibility is key’ |
| The member nations of RCEP bloc must empower their negotiators to adopt flexibility for resolving pending issues coming in the way of concluding the negotiations for the proposed mega trade agreement, Union Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu said about the proposed deal that is being negotiated.
“We should empower our negotiators with mandate to show flexibilities and accommodation on outstanding and pending issues,” Prabhu said at the RCEP meet. “We should be mindful of the limitations ahead, given that there are only three more rounds this year at the technical level,” he said. So far 25 rounds of talks have been concluded but the members have yet to finalise the number of goods on which customs duty will be eliminated. “With little more flexibility, we can accomplish a lot in services trade which holds immense potential for RCEP,” he added. |