Following her trade promotion trip to India, Israel, the West Bank and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Minister of International Trade, Export Promotion, Small Business and Economic Development Mary Ng said Canada and India have relaunched their negotiations for a Canada-India Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) that would give Canadian businesses greater access to India’s fast-growing market of 1.4 billion consumers.
A March 21 update by Global Affairs Canada of Ng’s trip, said the international trade minister and her Indian counterpart, Piyush Goyal, minister of commerce and industry, consumer affairs and food and public distribution and textiles, agreed March 11 during their “ministerial dialogue on trade and investment” that their “first deliverable” is to “work towards a Canada-India Early Progress Trade Agreement (EPTA).”
Such an interim agreement could be concluded early, as a transitional step towards the CEPA, Global Affairs said.
The proposed EPTA would be consistent with Article XXIV of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and would include high-level commitments in goods, services, rules of origin, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, technical barriers to trade, and dispute settlement, and could also cover other mutually agreed upon areas, the Canadian government said.
This is an excerpt from The Lawyer’s Daily article: https://www.thelawyersdaily.ca/articles/34688/trade-minister-announces-latest-move-toward-canada-india-interim-trade-agreement