Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Meet

Jaipur | Rajasthan

Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership meet

On 10th June 2019, Jaipur, WTC Jaipur, WTC Mumbai and Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), New Delhi, organized a ‘Stakeholder Consultation on RCEP’ with Northern India industry players having business interest in various RCEP countries at Summit, Conference Hall, Radisson Blu.

The consultation meeting was well attended by over 75 participants, exporters from handicraft, agriculture, garment and stone Industry. The meet also became a converging point for representative discussions and presentation by manufacturing trade associations, service providers, patent and copyright experts, academicians, researchers, foreign trade facilitators and export facilitating government departments.

Giving the background Dr. Saon Ray, Senior Fellow ICRIER, New Delhi, while giving her opening remarks explained RCEP is a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) being negotiated involving 16 countries namely ten countries of ASEAN (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam) and their six FTA partners i.e. Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea. RCEP negotiations have entered a critical stage having completed five years of negotiations in Goods, Services and Investments. Under the aegis of RCEP, countries would need to reduce or eliminate customs duty and expand market access for goods and services. The negotiations cover sectors such as agriculture, industrial products, raw materials, intermediates, financial services, professional services and IT services.”

Mr. Atul Poddar, Managing Director, Poddar Associates felt that proposed RCEP is gigantic in scope. It can potentially result in the largest free trade bloc in the world covering about 3.5 billion people and 30 per cent of the world’s Gross Domestic Product, ultimately covering almost half of the world’s population.

Mr. Mukesh Gupta, Executive Director, Morarka Organics observed “RCEP could be a turning point in heralding major trade-related reforms unheard of since the days of liberalization in 1991.RCEP will give Indian exporters a window to be a part of global value chains.”

A number of MSME, Associations and National Institute of Agricultural Marketing also shared their representation to Dr. Saon Ray during the program.

Vote of thanks was proposed by Mr. Navneet Agarwal – World Trade Center Jaipur

In the pic: extreme left: Dr. Saon Ray, Senior Fellow ICRIER, New Delhi addressing the august exporters gathering