New Delhi, March 2: India and Canada have launched negotiations for a free trade agreement and look to finalise the pact soon, an official statement said on Monday.
The pact is officially known as the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) and the negotiations would cover trade in goods, services and other mutually agreed policy areas.
The Terms of Reference (ToR) for the agreement were signed by Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal and his Canadian counterpart Maninder Sidhu here. “India and Canada launched negotiations for the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) today in New Delhi and decided to finalise it soon,” the commerce ministry said.
The ToR of negotiations will provide format, frequency, and approach to the CEPA negotiations. It will serve as a guide to facilitate negotiations in order to conclude an ambitious, balanced and mutually beneficial pact.
The launch marks the resumption of negotiations, as the two countries had earlier engaged in a similar exercise, but Canada paused it in 2023. Now they decided to resume talks from the beginning as a lot has changed on the global trade front during these two years. The negotiations are important as the two sides have fixed a target to increase the bilateral trade to USD 50 billion by 2030. (PTI)
