India’s Cabinet of Ministers will review the India-South Korea Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) and explore the option of excluding steel imports from the scope of the free trade agreement between the two countries, a senior official at India’s Ministry of Commerce said on Wednesday, June 22.
The ministry official said that the decision to forward the issue to the Cabinet of Ministers followed a meeting last week between Indian and South Korean trade ministers that reviewed bilateral trade between the two countries.
The trade ministers agreed that “bilateral concessions given under the CEPA needed to be improved,” the official said, adding that it is against this backdrop that India is considering the exclusion of steel imports from the free trade agreement.
Earlier this month, the government-owned Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL), the country’s largest steel producer, in a communication to the government sought an immediate review of the CEPA between India and South Korea and Japan.
India and South Korea signed their CEPA in 2010 and bilateral trade between the two countries was estimated at $16 billion in 2015-16, though Indian exports to South Korea fell 23 percent during the year to $3.54 billion.