Points of Discussion during the interaction with CII Trade Policy Committee

Mr Bharat Joshi, Member of the CII National Council, Co-Chairman, CII National Committee on Logistics and CII National Committee on Railways (Transport) and Director, Associated Container Terminals Limited / J-Curve Ventures gave the Welcome Remarks.
He extended a warm welcome to Prof. Dieter and said that the CII Trade Policy Committee could take advantage of Prof. Dieter’s presence in Delhi for the Raisina Dialogue.

He also gave a very special welcome to Dr Badri Narayanan Gopalakrishnan Head of Trade, Commerce and Strategic Economic Dialogue, NITI Aayog, Government of India, and to all the members of the CII Trade Policy Committee who were present.

Some of the points made by Mr. Joshi:

• The global trading regime is passing through a turbulent phase for quite some time. Without going back too far but starting with the big trade war involving USA and China (during Mr. Donald Trump’s presidency), followed by US withdrawal from the TPP; BREXIT in Europe; and the COVID pandemic induced global trade supply chain disruption. To add here, India’s sudden pull out of RCEP in November 2019.
• Putting all these factors together, and now the war between Russia and Ukraine has further adversely impacted the global trading environment. Though the situation is steadily getting back to new “normal”, the pandemic was far from over. There was still a lot of uncertainty, and the geo-political system was rapidly changing.
• In the midst of all this, India has recovered strongly, particularly on the international trade front. This year (financial year ending 31st March 2022) India achieved historical milestone of US$ 418 bn of merchandise trade. In services too we have almost touched US$ 250bn of export, which is an all-time high.
• This has given lot of confidence to Government of India, which is getting reflected into the trade negotiating stance. India has adopted a new FTA strategy, which are based on three new features – timely conclusion, more aggressive approach for goods market access and open to negotiate new issues such as sustainability, procurement, digital economy etc. These issues were never part of India’s trade agreement in the past.
• India has concluded FTAs with UAE and Australia, negotiating with UK and Canada and likely to relaunch our trade talks with the EU in the coming weeks. All these are very welcome change in our approach of engaging with the world while at the same time strengthening domestic manufacturing under the theme of “Atma-Nirbhar Bharat”.
• He also touched upon the current state of affairs at the WTO. Since the Ministerial is coming in the month of June, it is high time for us to work collectively to strengthen the multilateral trading system under the aegis of WTO, which is facing the existential crisis.

To read the Conference Report kindly refer to the attached pdf on the same webpage.