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India Inc wants FTA with EU

September 05, 2005 19:49 IST

Industry body Assocham on Monday said country's top CEOs are in favour of signing a specialised free trade agreement with the European Union in services.

Indian industry is keen on an FTA with EU in the areas of BPO, information technology, biotechnology and pharmaceutical sectors, an Assocham statement said.

The India-EU summit beginning on September 7 should focus on striking an FTA for areas such as financial services, legal services, accounting, telecom and retail, it said quoting the Assocham Business Barometer survey.

About 80 per cent of the over 100 CEOs surveyed felt that the India-EU summit should work out a significant improvement in offers under the ongoing general agreement on trade in services as both sides were dissatisfied with each other's offers to open up their services sector.

At current immigration flows, the decline in the number of working age population would have a huge impact on overall economic growth and the functioning of the internal market and the competitiveness of EU enterprises, the paper said.

"It is here that India can chip in with a vast resource of scientific engineering talent and it is up to EU to take advantage of trained Indians who have established their brand all over the world," M K Sanghi, president, Assocham said.

The ABB survey showed that visa restrictions were hampering the growth in BPO sector and the only way to remove these restrictions could be signing of a specialised FTA in services.

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