Regional comprehensive economic partnership
What can happen
RCEP Document is declared as finalised, it remains secret and further finetuning takes place till the implementation date
Posted:
Nov 03, 2019 07:30 AM
Updated:
4 years ago
- RCEP Document is declared as finalised, it remains secret and further finetuning takes place till the implementation date
- India stays out of RCEP, promising to join when all its concerns are addressed
- RCEP Document still remains a work in progress and gets finalised at next year’s summit
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About the proposed agreement
- It is a mega free trade agreement (FTA) trade block being negotiated in secret between 10 members of the ASEAN group and its six dialogue partners — South Korea, Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand and India
- The concept has its genesis in the free trade agreement among ASEAN countries
- Of the other 15 countries in RCEP, India already has FTAs with 12: ASEAN, Japan and South Korea
- Fly in the ointment is the lack of FTAs with New Zealand, Australia and China
- For India, the RCEP amounts to FTA with China but there are concerns from Japan, the Philippines, New Zealand and Australia too
India’s advantage
- FTA being negotiated in services where India has advantage, especially in IT, healthcare and education
- India will integrate with one of the world’s largest trading blocks at a time when the WTO is becoming ineffective
- India to get integrated in global supply chains passing through the RCEP countries, which means new jobs and investments
India’s disadvantage
- China may divert exports by masking them from other RCEP countries
- Unpreparedness of dairy sector will be exposed
- Top political leaders unable to publicly assuage fears as text is secret
- Comparatively poor productivity, investment and technology to disadvantage farm sector
- Imports of fully-built units/vehicles to hit steel, ancillary industry too
- Japan’s insistence on tough IPR norms may hit pharma industry
- Movement of people remains restricted