India, Russia Should Speed Up India-EEU FTA

Trade & Policy

India, Russia Should Speed Up India-EEU FTA

India and Russia should take the lead in finalising India-Eurasian Economic Union (IEEU) Free Trade Agreement (FTA), said Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). “In the past one year, significant progress has been made with both sides having accepted the reports submitted by Joint Feasibility Study Group (JFSG) in January 2017. In fact it's pertinent to note that JFSG was set up in SPIEF 2015 (St. Petersburg International Economic Forum - TASS). Now time is ripe to start the negotiations and conclude the agreement by 2018," he said. According to the CII, several important steps should be taken to intensify the bilateral trade. In particular, the Green Corridor project between India and Russia is a step to facilitate trade and set up trade infrastructure between the two countries," he said. "India and Russia should leverage their leadership position in the region to establish International North South Transit Corridor (INSTC). This multimodal transportation route will connect the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf to the Caspian Sea via Iran, and onward to northern Europe," the CII Director General said. He added that Russia and India should also more intensively promote cooperation at the level of regions. Zara may produce in Russia Russian Ministry of Industry will help Spanish retailer Zara to speed up localisation of production in Russia, Deputy Minister Viktor Evtukhov has informed. "We agreed to set up a project team in co-operation with Zara employees and to help in finding reliable Russian partners, which will make possible to perform accelerated localisation of production for items represented in Zara chain in Russia," the official said. Furthermore, an opportunity to produce Zara stock keeping units particularly for Russia "subject to traditions, taste preferences, climatic specificity and growing confidence of buyers in goods produced in our country" was discussed at the meeting, Evtukhov said. Negotiations with Russian companies regarding the opportunity to place retailer's orders started last year, he said. "I regret saying that not all Russian producers are ready to work with such major customers in terms of production because of certain objective reasons. Nevertheless, large scale contracts have already been made with Russia's TDL Textile on home textile; pre-contract negotiations with one of the largest Russian clothes producers are underway," Evtukhov added.