After the conclusion of the first round of negotiations for India-EU Trade and Investment Agreements, including the Geographical Indicators (GI), in New Delhi last week, the second round of negotiations will now take place in September 2022 at Brussels. Despite the global disruptions, India-EU bilateral trade showed growth of 43.5 per cent in 2021-22.
The first round of negotiations were held in a hybrid fashion – with some of the teams meeting in Delhi and most officials joining virtually. The round saw altogether 52 technical sessions covering 18 policy areas of FTA and seven sessions on Investment Protection and GIs.
India’s bilateral trade with EU amounted to $116.36 billion in 2021-22, registering an impressive annual growth of 43.5 per cent. Currently, EU is India’s second largest trading partner after the US, and the second largest destination for Indian exports.
The trade agreement with EU, once finalised and implemented, would help India in further expanding and diversifying its exports of goods and services, including securing the value chains. “Both sides are aiming for the trade negotiations to be broad-based, balanced and comprehensive, based on the principles of fairness and reciprocity,” an official statement said.
Out of India’s total apparel exports of $14.825 billion in 2021, the EU accounted for $5.349 billion, according to Fibre2Fashion’s market insight tool TexPro. However, India’s share was mere 2.57 per cent in total European apparel imports of $223.319 billion during 2021.
Europe also remained the second largest region for Indian export of home textiles. It imported $2.212 billion worth of home textiles out of total export of $8.830 billion last year. However, India is a very small supplier of home textiles to Europe with only about 6 per cent share out of total imports of $40.132 billion in 2021. India-EU negotiations were launched by Piyush Goyal, India’s minister for commerce & industry and European Commission’s executive vice president Valdis Dombrovskis at Brussels last month. While India is looking at larger penetration in the EU market through the trade agreement, European countries are looking at getting a bigger pie in the world’s fastest growing economy.
