‘India-UK FTA historic, serves as template for discussions with US, EU’: CII President

India’s recently signed free trade agreement (FTA) with the United Kingdom is “historic” and could serve as a “gold standard” for similar discussions with other regions like the United States and Europe, said Sanjiv Puri, President of the Confederation of Indian Industry (Cll).

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In an interview with Aggam Walia and Soumyarendra Barik, Puri also spoke about how the private sector in India needs to substantially increase its R&D spends for national development, why private capex is only a part of the overall economic development agenda, and whether India needs to revisit its trade relationship with China.It’s a historic agreement, and real credit to the Commerce Minister and his team, they really put in a lot of hard work. We have been, as part of the delegation, witness to how much hard work was put in for it. This is a historical deal. We have never signed such a comprehensive deal that covers 99 per cent of the tariff lines. It touches manufacturing, services, agriculture. 95 per cent of agriculture tariff lines are getting benefit out of the FTA. It's a gold standard for all other FTAs. It has also dealt with labour and sustainability issues. We do not know the fine print but it has addressed all of them. It is also a very strong signal to the world that India is serious and ready to take bold steps. And it’s also hopefully setting the tone and pace for two other important FTAs which are in the pipeline which are the EU and the US.

Some sectors like the liquor industry have concerns that the FTA will open it up to a lot of competition. Do you think many of our industries are ready for such competition that will happen due to the FTA?