labels: Economy - general
India-Singapore sign protocol to expand the tariff liberalization package news
20 December 2007

The government of India and Singapore have signed a protocol to amend the India-Singapore comprehensive economic cooperation agreement (CECA) to expand the tariff liberalisation package in the "trade in goods" category today.

The CECA between India and Singapore was signed on 29 June 2005 by Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh and Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore and came into effect from 1 August the same year.

Bilateral trade between the two has shown tremendous growth since then with India's exports to Singapore during 2005-06 and 2006-07 at $5.4 billion and $6.02 billion registering a growth of 35.61 and 10.98 per cent respectively.

Singapore's export to India during 2005-06 and 2006-07 at $3.4 billion and $5.5 billion registered a growth of 26.49 per cent and 63.10 per cent respectively. India had a positive trade balance of $551 million against Singapore in 2006-07.

Singapore had recently made a request for tariff elimination / reduction for certain products, which prompted New Delhi to respond by eliminating or reducing tariff on 539 products (at 8-digit HS code) as an additional concession within the existing India-Singapore CECA.

Of the 539 tariff lines, tariff elimination is to be achieved in 5 equal cuts between 15th January 2008 and 1st December 2011 for 307 items. These 307 items comprise mainly of articles of base metal, machinery and mechanical appliances, chemicals and textile and textile articles.

For another 97 products, tariff elimination has to be achieved in 9 equal cuts between 15 January 2008 and 1 December 2015. These 97 items comprise mainly machinery and mechanical appliances, plastic and rubber articles and textile and textile articles.

For 135 products, tariff reduction to 5 per cent has to be achieved in 9 equal cuts between 15 January 2008 and 1 December 2015. These items comprise mainly chemicals, plastic and rubber articles and machinery and mechanical appliances.

Under the existing "trade in goods agreement", about 83 per cent value of India's imports from Singapore are covered under products for which tariff is being eliminated or reduced. After the proposed additional tariff concessions, this coverage would go up to about 93 per cent.

It has also been decided to extend, under India-Singapore CECA, additional concessions that India may offer under ASEAN-India FTA in Goods in terms of product coverage, time-line, "rules of origin", with appropriate amendments to India- Singapore CECA.


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India-Singapore sign protocol to expand the tariff liberalization package