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ISEC Director Kumar Pattnaik (second from left), Southern India Chamber of Commerce and Industry Board Member/FTAs study Consultant Semi Hezari (third from left) and Minister of Industry and Commerce Rishad Bathiudeen (fourth from left) with the rest of the Indian researchers yesterday in Colombo
In a new development in the ongoing Indo-Lanka trade dialogue, an independent survey team has arrived in Colombo to map barriers to FTA trade, as revealed yesterday. The first round of this ground-breaking bilateral study will conclude in early 2015. “After the FTA was entered into, bilateral trade improved tremendously. I welcome your efforts to identify aspects where improvements are needed in our free trade dialogue,” said Minister of Industry and Commerce Rishad Bathiudeen. Bathiudeen was addressing the visiting independent study team from India led by Prof. Binay Kumar Pattnaik [Director, Institute of Social and Economic Change (ISEC), Bangalore, India] yesterday in Colombo. Pattnaik is in town with his seven-member team which is tasked by the Asia Foundation with the mapping of non-tariff barriers in the historic Indo-Lanka FTA. “We are an independent, semi-Government and Asia Foundation promoted study team consisting of three PhDs and other researchers from various Indian think tanks including Institute of Social and Economic Change (ISEC). I want to stress that this study is not done by the Government of India but by autonomous research institutions in India including ISEC and Centre for Policy Research (CPR),” said Pattnaik. He added: “Ever since we signed the FTA, there is substantial improvement in bilateral trade. We, as a study team, prefer to work on more specific issues in this study rather than of talking of broad trade policy issues. We want to identify areas of concern – in that, NTBs in the FTA process – so that they could be listed, rectified and workable solutions are devised. It is time this NTB issue is taken head-on!” Noting that the findings of the first round of the study would be published in early 2015 after which they would select a few focal areas to study in depth in the second round, Pattnaik said this effort was commenced in May 2014 in India. “At this moment our visit to Sri Lanka is a fact-finding one and we will return for bigger work. We already met with the Chamber of Commerce in Colombo and Department of Commerce, through which we will be speaking to Lankan exporters and importers to identify their issues. ISEC is the lead agency in the study along with CPR. On its part, ISEC itself has engaged five full-time researchers for this study. The cost of the first round is $ 20,000.” According to the Department of Commerce of Sri Lanka, India became the biggest product supplier to Sri Lanka in 2013, followed by China. Total trade under ISFTA stood at $ 748.2 m and jumped by a strong 40% in 2013 from 2012’s $ 536 m. Bathiudeen said: “Last year, India became the biggest supplier to Sri Lanka with more than $ 3 billion exports to Sri Lanka. At the same time, after the FTA our exports to India increased greatly. Sometimes, our exporters face certain concerns, in the form of Non-Tariff Barriers. Removing such NTBs will enhance our bilateral trade significantly. What is more important is we can also identify non-exploited product lines of FTA at both sides and start moving these products too.” Under the FTA, more than 4,000 product lines are now open tariff free to exporters at both ends. In 2013, total Indo-Lanka trade stood at $ 3.636 b, with imports from India reporting no less than $ 3.09 b and 65% of Lanka’s total exports to India were exports under ISFTA at $ 354 m. The balance of trade between India and Sri Lanka remains in favour of India due to the increased outlay on major import items such as petroleum products and automobiles.
