“Senior officers of both sides
have met on March 28 here and have
discussed formally starting talks for the FTA,” a senior official said.
EaEU is an economic union of five post-Soviet states in Eurasia,
namely Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Armenia, and Kyrgyzstan. The EaEU was
established on January 1, 2015, and has a single market, with 183 million
people and combined GDP of over $2.4 trillion as of 2023.
.In recent months, talks seemed to have gathered pace. The
Ukraine-Russia conflict made Russia the 4th biggest source of
imports resulting in therefore a huge trade deficit with it.
India is seeking opportunities for its agriculture and engineering
sector in Russia and investments in the energy sector. As India became a base
for mobile handset manufacturing, Russia had become a significant buyer. The
trade telecom of electronics and telecom goods exports to Russia and Belarus
are now impacted due to Western sanctions on such exports. In effect, this has closed the opportunity for
India in the emerging sector.
The joint feasibility study for the FTA was done way back in 2016 and
this has been followed by another study by India’s Exim Bank.
The FTAs that are nearing completion include ones with the UK and
Oman. Talks are said to be on with the European Union and Peru for a trade
agreement. Trade agreements are crucial for a country’s economy to grow but of
course reaching agreements are not that easy since the countries seek
opportunities for their growth. Actually,
mutual benefits decide the agreements in general.