India signs Trade in Services & Trade in Investments Agreement with ASEA

On September 9, 2014 India signed the Trade in Services and Trade in Investments Agreement with ASEAN. The signing of the agreement in Services & Investment reflects India’s deep commitment to have a strong institutional architecture for economic ties with ASEAN. The object of the Agreement is to open up opportunities of movement of both manpower and investments between India and ASEAN. All the ASEAN’s have signed the agreement except Philippines, which is expected to sign soon.

Key features of the Trade in Service Agreement are 

• It contains all the features of a modern and comprehensive agreement on Services and is in line with the other bilateral agreements that India has signed so far.
• Some important Articles in the Agreement are the ones on transparency, national treatment, increasing participation of developing countries, review, dispute settlement, denial of benefits etc.
• Both India and ASEAN Member States have taken GATS plus commitments in various Services and modes of supply.
• A brief annex on Movement of Natural persons has been included in the Agreement, which helps to provide commercially meaningful market across in ASEAN for our professionals. However, it does not define ‘Independent professionals’