EAEU and India Agree on Trade Liberalization Framework in FTA Talks

MOSCOW, June 26. /TASS/. The Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) countries and India, during the second round of negotiations in Moscow on a free trade agreement, agreed on the framework for liberalizing trade in goods, Russia's Economic Development Ministry said in a statement.

"India is Russia's strategic partner and its third-largest trading partner. Despite the significant volume of trade, our export portfolio to India remains poorly diversified. Indian colleagues are also interested in increasing exports to the Russian market. As the negotiations have demonstrated, this mutual interest could make it possible to achieve fairly substantial liberalization of overall trade flows," Russian Deputy Economic Development Minister Vladimir Ilyichev said.

In addition to tariff liberalization, the parties discussed issues related to the application of sanitary and phytosanitary measures, as well as technical regulation measures. They also reviewed issues concerning the promotion of fair competition, protection of intellectual property rights, customs administration, deeper cooperation in priority sectors of the economy, and a number of other topics.

As TASS previously reported, negotiations with India were launched in November last year. The agreement is expected to cover a broad range of issues related to trade in goods among the participating countries.