The commerce department is pushing ahead with the United States-led Indo Pacific Economic Framework’s (IPEF’s) ‘supply-chain’ agreement, for which it has sought the Union Cabinet’s approval. The process of legal vetting of the supply chain pillar’s text has been completed. The text will be made public in November, along with the text of all the four pillars under IPEF.
There are four pillars — trade, supply chain resilience, clean economy, and fair economy (tax and anti corruption) — under the economic initiative. As of now, the supply chain is the first pillar to be finalised by the 14 IPEF member nations.
It is aimed at making supply chains more robust and well-integrated. It also aims to improve crisis coordination and response to supply-chain disruptions and working together to support the timely delivery of affected goods to member countries during a crisis. It is also eyeing capacity building to increase investment in critical sectors.
In May, an official statement had mentioned the substantial conclusion of the negotiations of a ‘first-of-its-kind international IPEF Supply Chain Agreement’ at the IPEF Ministerial Meeting in the US.
The idea behind the agreement is to increase the ‘resilience, efficiency, productivity, sustainability, transparency, diversification, security, fairness, and inclusivity’ of supply chains. This can be done through both collaborative activities and individual actions taken by each IPEF member nation.
