India and Australia on April 2 signed an Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement (ECTA) in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his counterpart in Canberra Scott Morrison.
- Both countries eye on doubling bilateral trade to $50 billion in five years and easing movement of people, goods and services across borders.
- The India-Australia ECTA is the first trade agreement of India with a developed country after more than a decade.
- The Agreement encompasses cooperation across the entire gamut of bilateral economic and commercial relations between the two friendly countries, and covers areas like Trade in Goods, Rules of Origin, Trade in Services, Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT), Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) measures, Dispute Settlement, Movement of Natural Persons, Telecom, Customs Procedures, Pharmaceutical products, and Cooperation in other Areas.
- It will facilitate zero duty access “on over 96% of Indian exports, including several labour-intensive industries”.
- India will, in turn, offer preferential access to Australia on over 70% of its tariff lines on goods imports, including ‘lines of export interest to Australia.
- The agreement with Australia is expected to create 10 lakh additional jobs in the country over the next five years.
India-Australia relation
- India and Australia are partners in the trilateral Supply Chain Resilience Initiative (SCRI) arrangement along with Japan which seeks to enhance the resilience of supply chains in the Indo-Pacific Region.
- India and Australia are also members of the recently formed Quad, also comprising US, and Japan, to further enhance cooperation and develop partnership across several issues of common concerns.
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