The Synthetic & Rayon Textiles Export Promotion Council

Inputs on MMF textiles at 8 digit tariff line pertaining to RCEP Agreement

Ref: MR/Circular/2019/1772                                                  Date: 15th July, 2019

To the Members of the Council

Dear Sir,

Sub: Inputs on MMF textiles at 8 digit tariff line pertaining to RCEP Agreement.

As you are aware, India is negotiating the mega Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) with 10 ASEAN Member countries and ASEAN’s free trade agreement (FTA) partners viz., Australia, China, Japan, Korea and New Zealand. RCEP reflects the emerging trade and economic architecture globally. RCEP would be the world’s largest trading bloc covering a broad spectrum of issues such as trade in goods, services, investment, competition, intellectual property rights, and other areas of economic and technical cooperation. Together, the RCEP group of countries accounts for a third of the world’s gross domestic product and 27.4 per cent and 23.0 per cent of the world’s goods and services trade, respectively.

Already the RCEP Member countries have had 25th rounds of negotiations. The 25th round of negotiation was held in Bali, Indonesia from February 19 to 28, 2019.

From India’s point of view, the RCEP presents a decisive platform which could influence its strategic and economic status in the Asia-Pacific region and bring to fruition its “Act East Policy.” It is expected to be an ambitious agreement bringing the five biggest economies of the region – Australia, China, India, Japan and South Korea – into a regional trading arrangement. India is already having FTA with ASEAN, CEPA with Japan and Korea. India is also negotiating for FTAs with Australia and New Zealand. However, India so far does not have any FTA engagements with the RCEP major China. It was noted that RCEP member countries specially China and Korea, are having huge surplus capacity in most of the MMF textiles as well as MMF textile intermediaries. Increasing import from these surplus countries into India have already been impacting domestic manufacturing units and posing serious threat. Therefore, this Council has been suggesting to the Government to keep all the MMF textile tariff lines strictly in the Exclusion/Negative List under the RCEP Agreement. The same was also reiterated and insisted at the stakeholder consultations on RCEP held on 10.7.2019.

In this regard, to justify our stand on keeping all the MMF textile tariff lines in the Exclusion/Negative List under the RCEP Agreement, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry is seeking inputs from the Council on specific HS 8 digit line wise production figures of China and India.

In view of the above, we have prepared a list of 509 MMF textile tariff lines at HS 8 digit falling under the Council (Annexure – I) and request your views/ inputs by Friday, 19th July, 2019. The desired inputs may be emailed at ed@srtepc.in, baruah@srtepc.in.

Thanking you.

Yours faithfully,

 

S. Balaraju
Executive Director  

Encl: Annexure – I