Prime Minister to attend ASEAN and East Asia Summit

NI Wire

New Delhi

Tue, 20 Nov 2007: 

Nov 20:   Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has flown to Singapore to attend two day annual summit of the sixth Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the third East Asia SummitESA) on Tuesday.

He urged the ten membered ASEAN group to strengthen trade with India with the facilitation of free trade agreement.

Giving an account of the trade between India and ASEAN nation which rose to $30 billion he said, “Our trade with the ASEAN countries has grown rapidly and surpassed our expectations.”

"I will discuss with the ASEAN leaders new measures to expand the horizons of our cooperation to include not just greater economic integration, but also people-to-people contacts, science and technology, health, transport, human resource development, and information and communication technology."

Earlier ASEAN put hold the negotiations on Free Trade until India come up with more tariff concession for petroleum and agricultural stuff.

“For the time being, it's temporarily postponed because we still cannot agree on the product coverage,” Indonesian Trade Minister Mari Pangestu.

It is reported that India wants over 800 products to be excluded from tariff cuts.

PM will also meet Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda as well as the Malaysian and Singaporean heads of governments for talks.

ASEAN is a block of ten member nation including Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Meanwhile, Kamal Nath Commerce and Industry Minister is scheduled to meet his counterparts on Tuesday to reach a decision ahead of the summit on Wednesday.

ASEAN is also negotiating free-trade agreements with countries like China, Japan and Australia.

Last year India decided to cut tariff on palm oil from 70% to 50% and those on refined palm oil from 80% to 60%.

Malaysian and Indonesian with 80% of world crude palm oil production want more concession. While Vietnam and Thailand want tariff reduction on black pepper, coffee and tea.

But this has become clear from the significant interest shown by other countries that India is important as many officials believe that India is ASEAN’s future export market.

Prime Minister said that he will discuss with the other leaders and will try to strengthen India’s Look East policy.

He described The ESA summit as one of the most ambitious exercises of community building and integration ever attempted in Asia and that India is ready to take initiatives in the areas identified by ESA including energy, education, finance, avian influenza and national disaster mitigation.

He pointed the presence of fast growing economies of East Asia which can have a profound impact on the global economy and international relations.