Union minister for commerce and industry, Piyush Goyal on Monday said that India did not resume talks to join the ‘Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP)’.
India walked out of the negotiations two years ago to focus on matters of national interest, said Goyal.
He said that some of the countries were not following the rule of law and were being opaque in trade talks during the RCEP negotiations.
Goyal criticized the then Congress-led UPA government for joining the negotiations, saying, “India lost precious time because of an ill-conceived decision to start discussing and taking part in the RCEP negotiation.”
The NDA government “did our very best to engage with the grouping of 15 other countries,” he said, adding that the decision was taken 10 years ago by the then government to make India a part of the RCEP negotiations.
Notably, the 15-nation RCEP is acknowledged as the world’s largest trading bloc. India had joined the negotiations in 2012 and in 2019, 15 countries including China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand had signed the free trade agreement.
India had walked away then citing national interests. India’s dairy, agriculture, and MSME sectors would have been badly affected if the government decided to join the RCEP in 2019, Goyal said.
The Union minister further said, “We would have been flooded with low quality opaquely priced products against which India could never have competed. It was a very wise decision that Prime Minister Narendra Modi decided to walk out of RCEP. The entire country heaved a sigh of relief.”
