Aiming for an early harvest trade deal with Israel: Piyush Goyal

NEW DELHI: India and Israel will soon begin negotiations for a free trade agreement (FTA), commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal said on Tuesday and asserted that quick estimates show that merchandise exports have grown in November.

"We will shortly be commencing negotiations virtually to begin with and moving into an early stage early harvest FTA with Israel, where we have tremendous interest in their innovation in their agritech, fintech and other deep tech areas of work..." Goyal told reporters.




He said India was interested in mobility and services in a big way where it is looking at ability to provide manpower for infrastructure creation and take infrastructure projects for development in Israel or attracting investments from Israeli companies to leverage their innovations for the world market.

"The potential for an Israel-India FTA is huge and we hope to work in mission mode since the direction of both Prime Minister Modi and Prime Minister Netanyau is to solidify this strategic partnership at the earliest," said Goyal detailing the number of FTAs that India has lined up for negotiations. He said the talks for a FTA with the Eurasian Economic Union would be launched on Wednesday.

Goyal said exports were holding up and quick estimates show that merchandise exports was showing growth compared to last year. He said seafood exports to the EU have increased sharply and overall seafood exports have also grown in the last three months post the tariffs. "It only goes to show that our Indian business, our Indian exporters, are resilient. They are full of confidence. They have the ability to face challenges," said Goyal.

Earlier at the Board of Trade meeting, the minister said India must expand its economy and create more employment opportunities by increasing exports and called for strong collaboration between the Centre and the states to drive export expansion and diversification.

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