NEW DELHI: India and South Korea are carrying out a review of their free trade agreement to further boost bilateral trade and investment, a senior commerce ministry official has said.
The agreement, officially dubbed as Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), between the two countries was implemented in January 2010.
Both the sides have constituted sub-groups on issues such as goods, services, investments and rules of origin.
"Review is on to see how we can improve utilisation of this pact. Discussions are underway," the official said and added "we are also looking at how trade between the countries have behaved" since the implementation.
Exporters' body FIEO (Federation of Indian Export Organisations) said that there is a huge scope of increasing trade and investment with South Korea.
"We can look at increasing exports of marine products and other commodities besides huge investment opportunities are there for South Korean companies in India," FIEO Director General Ajay Sahai said.
The bilateral trade between the countries stood at USD 16.83 billion in 2016-17. The trade is in favour of South Korea.
India's imports during the last fiscal was USD 12.59 billion, while exports were only USD 4.24 billion.
India has received USD 2.26 billion foreign direct investment from South Korea between March 2000 and April 2017.
Under a free trade agreement, duties on most of the products traded between the countries are either eliminated or reduced sharply.