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Jan. 27 – India wants to prioritize negotiations for the trade services component of its Free Trade Agreement with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
The services agreement will allow more qualified Indian professionals to travel and work in Southeast Asia after a FTA in goods with the regional bloc was implemented this month. India wants to gain more market access for its IT, information technology-enabled service, health and education services in the ASEAN region- a market which imported more than US$180 billion worth of services in 2008.
The country has a huge number of English speaking professionals thus India is also working towards access in the fields of teaching, nursing, architecture, chartered accountancy and medicine. The Indian services sector is its top earner, contributing more than 55 percent to gross domestic product.
The beginning of the India-ASEAN FTA in goods this year gradually enforced duty-free trade on more than 4,000 goods while the FTA agreements in services and investment is set to be finalized by August.
“We will get a clear idea about the feasibility of the August deadline when we meet next week and see how prepared the ASEAN countries are for speeding up the negotiations,” a government official told The Economic Times.
The ASEAN member countries are: Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand and Singapore.
