NEW DELHI: The European Free Trade Association (ETFA) was in a hurry and aiming to finalize the Free Trade Agreement with India before the announcement of Lok Sabha elections. Fortunately, they were able to achieve this goal. It took almost 16 years for this agreement to come to fruition.
"We were running against the clock as we wanted to finalise the FTA before elections. We remained positive and pushed ourselves to achieve this,’’ Swiss Secretary for Economic Affairs, Helene Budliger Artieda said while speaking exclusively with TNIE.
However, the agreement needs to be ratified in the EFTA Parliament, which is likely to take place in autumn of this year around september/October.
"We are innovative in Switzerland and we managed to introduce a investment pledge and a job pledge for this agreement linked to goods and market access.. But Switzerland is known for innovation and our secretariat in EFTA worked hard to achieve this,’’ Artieda said adding that they are glad to be happy to cross the finishing line first.
India is still working on an FTA with UK and EU. It is difficult at this point to state whether there would be any overlap between the EFTA and the other two FTA’s. But this certainly would give more clarity to the other two FTAs in terms of what to go ahead with.
Meanwhile, EFTA has 34 FTAs across 44 countries. Their largest FTA is with EU followed by China and they are hoping that Sunday’s agreement with India will be amongst the largest.
The FTA with China was signed 10 years back.
"The idea was to strike a balance deal with a country as large as India (1.4 billion population) with EFTA which has got just 15 million. But we could manage to strike a balance,’’ she added.
Migration and mobility are not a part of TEPA.
EFTA is now looking at similar agreement in Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia and they feel that signing one with India will help them in finalizing these as well.
The European Free Trade Association (EFTA) – India Trade and Economic Partnership Agreement (TEPA) was signed in New Delhi on Sunday between Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal and Guy Parmelin (Swiss Federal Councillor), Bjarni Benediktsson (Foreign Affairs Minister of Iceland), Dominique Hasler (Foreign Minister of Liechtenstein) and Jan Christian Vestre (Minister of Trade and Industry Norway).