In FTA talks, European Free Trade Association assured opening up services: Piyush Goyal

Piyush Goyal in Mumbai for G20 meeting

The four-member European Free Trade Association (EFTA) is keen on signing a trade pact with India and has given assurances that it will come with "very attractive proposals" as talks continue over a Free Trade Agreement (FTA), Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal has said.

"I recently got a message from the four EFTA countries… All four ministers wanted to come down to India," Goyal told reporters in Mumbai on March 30.

"There has been a series of meetings over the last 30-40 days (with European Free Trade Association). They have assured me that they will be coming with very attractive proposals in terms of opening up services and a deeper understanding of India's own concerns around our patent laws and the need to protect our domestic industry," the commerce minister added.

The European Free Trade Association comprises of Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland.

According to reports earlier this month, India has ruled out any relief in the gold import duty or relaxing intellectual property rights rules as part of any agreement with the European Free Trade Association.

India imports gold heavily from Switzerland, which is also home to pharma giants like Novartis that consider India's intellectual property rights as rigid.

Goyal said he had "lost count" of the number of trade ministers from other nations he had met this month alone.

"I can assure you that (FTA) talks are going on very well with the United Kingdom, with Canada, with the 26 EU countries. We are also in dialogue with Israel, we are also in dialogue with many other countries who want to start discussing FTAs…Recently, the Bangladesh commerce minister was here, he also reiterated his interest in entering into an FTA with India," he further said, adding that the "launch date and other modalities" of the FTA with the Gulf Cooperation Council was under discussion.

Goyal, who is in the city for the first meeting of the G20 Trade & Investment Working Group, also said that many countries had shown interest in the settlement of trade with India in rupees, although the matter was mostly discussed bilaterally.

Earlier this month on March 14, the finance ministry informed Parliament that the Reserve Bank of India had granted approvals to correspondent banks from 18 countries, including those from major nations such as the UK and Germany, to open Vostro accounts to settle international trade in rupees.

Under the RBI's mechanism to settle international trade in rupees, authorised Indian banks must open Special Rupee Vostro accounts of correspondent banks of the partner trading country to settle these transactions.

Commenting more broadly on the economy, Goyal said India is a "bright spot" in a world facing challenges and is a role model in "efficient economic management" as it had been able to contain inflationary pressures even as developed nations battled multi-decade high prices rises.

"The current streak of nine years of very reasonable inflation, where over a nine-year period we have seen probably an average of 5 percent inflation is clearly the golden era of India in terms of macroeconomic management, strengthening the fundamentals of India's economy, and preparing India to face the challenges before the world," the minister said.