'No adverse impact of joining Trans-Pacific Partnership'

Vishakhapatm, Jan 11: Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday sought to reassure Indian industry on Monday that there would be no adverse impact of entering into the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) multilateral trade agreement. “There is nothing to worry about the adverse impact of TPP on India. We have taken necessary steps to boost India’s trade and investment in the wake of emerging new trade architecture,” she said in her address at the Confederation of Indian Industry’s annual partnership summit here.

The TPP is a US-led trade agreement involving twelve Pacific Rim countries and concerning a variety of matters of trade and economic policy, on which consensus was reached in October last year after 7 years of negotiations.

Sitharaman also said the real implementation of TPP has a long way to go as till date, not a single TPP member has got it passed through their parliament.

“There is nothing regiol about TPP as countries are spread across different continents. This is an agreement involving a basket of countries,” she added.

India could increase its exports by $500 billion per year by joining the next stage of the TPP trade agreement according to a study - “India’s Rise: A Strategy for Trade-Led Growth” by C. Fred Bergsten of the Peterson Institute for Intertiol Economics - released last month in Washington. According to the study, India will lose as much as $50 billion of current exports because of increasing discrimition against it by other countries if it remains outside the new global trade network. (IANS)