India-South Korea free trade talks conclude

India has concluded free trade negotiations with South Korea, a senior commerce ministry official said.“The India-Korea Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (Cepa) will be finalized on 18 November after which it will be taken up by the cabinet,” Dinesh Sharma, joint secretary, ministry of commerce and industry said.However, the deal has to be approved by the South Korean national assembly before it is notified. “We hope the agreement will come in to effect not before June next year,” Sharma added. Discussions with South Korea for such an agreement were on since 2006.The trade agreement with South Korea covers trade in goods as well as services, measures for trade facilitation and promotion, facilitation and liberalization of investment flows, measures for promoting bilateral economic cooperation in identified sectors among other things. “One interesting thing about the Indo-Korea trade agreement is that a positive list approach for services is being followed unlike other countries where a negative list approach is followed. This is because South Korea has interest in specific sectors like information technology, telecom and retail,” said Arpita Mukherjee, professor at the economic think tank Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations. India has signed a Cepa only with Singapore in 2005.