India and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), a group consisting of Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland, signed a free trade agreement on Sunday, March 10. This agreement aims to encourage investments and enhance trade in goods and services between the two parties.
India and the members of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) held 21 rounds of talks over 16 years to clinch the broad-based Trade and Investment Agreement.
The deal involves EFTA countries committing to invest $100 billion in India over the next 15 years. The agreement, officially dubbed Trade and Economic Partnership Agreement (TEPA), covers various aspects such as trade in goods, rules of origin, intellectual property rights, services, investment promotion, government procurement, technical trade barriers, and trade facilitate
India is the EFTA’s fifth-largest trading partner after the European Union, the United States, Britain, and China, with total two-way trade touching $25 billion in 2023, its trade ministry estimates. Its exports to the EFTA touched $2.8 billion and imports were about $22 billion during that period. With a population of 13 million and a combined GDP of more than $1 trillion, the EFTA nations are the world’s ninth-largest merchandise trader and its fifth-largest in commercial services.
This is India’s fourth such agreement since 2014. The previous agreements were signed with Mauritius, the UAE, and Australia. EFTA, though not part of the European Union (EU), is an organization that promotes free trade among its member countries.
India earlier rejected the four nations’ demand for the pact to include provisions on “data exclusivity” that would make it difficult for its drug companies to produce generic variants of the off-patent drugs, Indian officials said. India and the EFTA also agreed to largely keep “sensitive” farm products and gold imports out of the pact.
India is also separately negotiating a comprehensive free trade agreement with the European Union (EU), a 27-nation bloc.
