Domestic customers will get access to high-quality Swiss products such as watches, chocolates, biscuits, and clocks at lower prices as India will phase out customs duties under its trade pact with the EFTA bloc on these goods over a period of time.
India and the four-European nation bloc EFTA signed a trade and economic partnership agreement (TEPA) on Sunday to boost trade and investments between the two regions.
The European Free Trade Association (EFTA) members are Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland. It will take up to a year to implement the agreement due to an elaborate ratification process of these pacts in different countries.
For the first time in the history of FTAs (free trade agreements), a legal commitment is being made to promoting target-oriented investment and the job creation. Almost all the domestic industrial goods would get duty-free access in EFTA nations under the agreement, besides duty concessions on processed agricultural products.
Switzerland, the major trading partner of India in the bloc, already removed duties from January this year on almost all industrial goods. On the other hand, India is offering 82.7 per cent of its tariff lines or product categories, which covers 95.3 per cent of EFTA exports of which more than 80 per cent of imports is gold.
On gold, India has not touched the effective customs duty (which is 15 per cent) but has reduced the bound rate by one per cent to 39 per cent. Bound and applied rates are used in international trade parlance. While bound tariffs or duties refer to the ceiling, the applied tariff is the duty, which is currently in place.
India will also provide duty concessions on certain PLI (production-linked incentive) sectors like pharma, medical devices and processed food Sensitivities related to these sectors have been kept in mind while extending offers.
Sectors such as dairy, soya, coal and sensitive agricultural products are kept on the exclusion list, which means there would not be any duty concessions on these goods. In the services sector, the commerce ministry said, India has offered 105 sub-sectors to the EFTA like accounting, business services, computer services, distribution and health.
