Peruvian Foreign Trade and Tourism Minister Eduardo Ferreyros on Wednesday highlighted upcoming free trade agreement (FTA) negotiations with India, which also include the trade of services and investments.
"Last September, we completed the FTA Joint Feasibility Study, in which we identified benefits of an eventual trade agreement with India," he recalled.
This morning, the wait for India's approval of the said study came to an end as the Indian Union Cabinet led by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi agreed to start trade-agreement negotiations.
In addition to trade in goods, the agreement is set to cover services and investments, thus becoming India's first broad agreement with a Latin American country.
To this end, arrangements are underway to start negotiations in the first quarter of 2017.
The agreement is not only intended to reduce tariffs for Peruvian products, but also to get Indian market access for service exports such as gastronomy franchises (restaurants), professional services and IT services, Ferreyros underlined.
Peru-India trade
According to the aforementioned study, an eventual Peru-India FTA is likely to boost Peruvian exports to the Asian nation by up to 12%, mainly of clothing, fruit, vegetable and chemical products, among others.
In Jan-Nov 2016, Peruvian exports to India climbed 36.3% over the same period in 2015, whereas non-traditional exports hit US$76.4 million.
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