Anand Sharma with EU Trade Commissioner Baroness Ashton and Minister for Trade, Sweden, Eva Bjorling

Namrata Kath Hazarika | 07 Nov, 2009
The India-EU deal will focus on Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs), said the Commerce Minister Anand Sharma in the sidelines of a press conference in New Delhi on Friday.

Sharma said, "SMEs figure in our priority list. Not only with the European Union (EU) but in all our negotiations with other countries the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) would be given priority."

"SMEs is the major employment generator with about 40 percent of  Indian's exports being conducted by SMEs and are also incubators of technologies. The non-profit companies that we have set up in India between the government and FICCI are meant to assist the Small and medium enterprises (SMEs)," the commerce minister added.

While maintaining that environmental and labour-related issues need to be part of the talks, European trade commissioner Catherine Ashton added that the benefits of the proposed FTA should be deep and not just be restricted to the economic gains.

"India-EU talks should focus on trade, investment and services. When we are negotiating a deal, we are trying to ensure it does not lead to a situation where the environment for the workforce is worse then before," Ashton said.

In fact, labour and environment related topics are still part of the FTA talks, while climate change issues are out of it.

In this context Sharma commented, "Here we are talking about trade in goods, services and investment. But these (social issues) are extraneous."

Commenting on exports, he said on the sidelines of the press conference, "India's exports, which fell for 12 consecutive months since October 2008, may see a turnaround in the January-March quarter."

"Last October exports have fallen by 39 percent and our last figures (October 2009) was close to 13 percent. We hope that we are closing the gap hopefully, and by the end of the current quarter (of the present financial year) we shall definitely move in a positive way," Sharma added.

The country's merchandise exports fell for the 12th straight month this September, dipping 13.8 percent to $13.6 billion, as compared to the corresponding month last fiscal. The decline was highest in May, with exports falling 39.2 percent.

Both India- EU is expecting that the Doha talks and ongoing discussion on Free Trade Agreement (FTA) would probably conclude by the year 2010.