India is out of RCEP for now: Piyush Goyal

NEW DELHI: Commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal on Tuesday said that India is out of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) trade agreement for now till the time its demands are met and is open for further talks. Since India is not out of the pact acrimoniously, there were no fears of isolation, he said. Blaming the UPA for the higher tariff concessions given to Asean earlier, Goyal said changing the stance overnight was not possible.
The minister said that India decided to opt out of the deal as small industries and other sectors such as pharmaceutical, chemical and textiles opposed it.

Highlighting that at one point in time, there were 70 issues of contention of which 50 were specific to India especially of correcting the burgeoning trade deficit that New Delhi has with other RCEP members, Goyal said many of these demands were met but eventually India decided to stay out.

“We stood firm on strict rules of origin, base rate and auto trigger safeguard mechanism… We tried to keep almost all dairy and agricultural products completely out,” Goyal said at a press conference here.