India Manages Veto Power at RCEP through
“Single Undertaking” Clause
India has managed to convince its partner
countries negotiating the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) to
insert the words ‘single undertaking’ for both goods and services in the joint
statement of the second inter-sessional Trade Ministers meeting in Cebu last
week.
This will ensure that the pact on services is signed jointly
with the one on goods and the country does not lose its negotiating plank for
services.
The RCEP, which has 16 members including the 10-member ASEAN,
India, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, aims to create one
of the largest free trade blocs in the world as the countries account for 45
per cent of the world population and over $21 trillion of gross domestic
product.
India
also asserted the need for ‘deviations’ in goods that would enable it to give
lower concessions to countries such as China, New Zealand and Australia with
which it does not have free trade pacts. “India has demanded the flexibility to
protect more items against high tariff cuts in the case of certain countries,
including China, and also longer implementation period,” the official said.
A
single undertaking, as promised in the latest joint statement of RCEP Trade
Ministers, means that the final agreement would see pacts in all the three core
areas of goods, services and investment being signed simultaneously. New Delhi
had lost out on the chance to strike a good deal in services with the ASEAN in
the free trade agreement signed between the two, as it had agreed to seal a
pact in goods first. This resulted in no bargaining chip left for the country
when it negotiated a deal in services.