Indian trade agreements-prospects of Indo-Asean agreement

Abstract

To analyze the Impact of a Comprehensive Indo-ASEAN agreement encompassing goods services, investments and human resource transfer, in the light of existing FTAs India has entered into ( Indo-Srilanka FTA, Indo-Singapore CECA and Indo– Thailand FTA )and its trade potential with major ASEAN economies Methodology Adopted The project work comprises of three major sections and the following methodology has been adopted for each of these sections a) Analyzing the rationale behind bilateral trade agreements: This part of work includes analyzing the various theories which explains the movement of international Trade. Various existing trade agreements in were studied to analyze their successes and failures and the background behind their existence b) Analysis of existing Indian free trade agreements: The agreements which were chosen for study were Srilanka, Singapore, Thailand and draft agreement with ASEAN. The gains from each of these agreements to India were quantified by doing a scenario analysis of trade flow on giving varying level of tariff concessions. c) Trade potential study of ASEAN countries: This would involve analyzing the individual countries comprising ASEAN with regards to their macroeconomic, merchandise trade. Existing and possible cooperation in services sectors like Infrastructure, Tourism and Information technology have been stressed upon for all of these.