The Canadian Government has intimated India that it is placing on pause ongoing negotiations towards an Early Progress Trade Agreement or EPTA.
Responding to a query from the Hindustan Times, India’s High Commissioner to Ottawa Sanjay Kumar Verma said the pause was “requested by the Canadian side.”
“Some stocktaking seems underway. We will await request to ‘unpause’,” he added.
No reason has been given by Canada for the “pause”, which is expected to be temporary but could mean an agreement is unlikely to be arrived at this year, as was expected after a successful bilateral meeting between Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal and his Canadian counterpart, Minister of International Trade, Export Promotion, Small Business and Economic Development Mary Ng.
In fact, slowing down of negotiations was signalled as the two ministers did not have the expected bilateral meeting on the margins of the G20 Trade Ministers vertical in Jaipur last month.
The “pause” comes about just before Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is scheduled to visit New Delhi for the G20 leaders’ summit on September 9 and 10.
That negotiations have stopped for now was first reported by the agency Canadian Press, which quoted Verma as saying, “There is an honest request from the Canadian side, and we have no reason not to accept it.”
{{/usCountry}}That negotiations have stopped for now was first reported by the agency Canadian Press, which quoted Verma as saying, “There is an honest request from the Canadian side, and we have no reason not to accept it.”
{{/usCountry}}Negotiations towards the EPTA, precursor to a larger Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement or CEPA, commenced last year, after Ng visited India for a bilateral visit in March. So far, ten rounds of talks have been completed between negotiators of the two sides.
In May, after the meeting between Ng and Goyal in Ottawa, Global Affairs Canada, the country’s foreign ministry, said, in a release they had “made progress” and the EPTA “would cover shared areas of importance such as high level commitments in goods, investment, service, a focus on rules-based international order, technical barriers to trade and dispute settlement.”
Bilateral trade in goods between the two countries reached about CA$11.9 billion in 2022, a 56 per cent growth from 2021. Service trade reached CA$8.9 billion in 2022.
There is optimism that the “pause” will be short and talks will commence again once Ng visits India in October, as she leads a Team Canada trade delegation.