At a time when India has negotiated free trade agreements with a number of countries/groups, including the Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), and has decided to begin the review of the India-ASEAN free trade agreement, the state of trade between India and its major free trade partners needs to be examined. Major free trade agreements signed and implemented by India to date include the South Asia Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA), the India-ASEAN Comprehensive Agreement (ECSA), the India-Korea Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) and the Indian and Japanese EPA. ASEAN is one of India`s main trading partners. The ECSC with ASEAN came into force on January 1, 2010 and bilateral trade between the two parties increased from about $43 billion in 2009-10 to $97 billion in 2018-19. As with SAFTA`s Indian trade, bilateral trade between India and ASEAN grew faster than India`s total trade with the world, resulting in an increase of 9.4% to 11.5% of ASEAN`s share of Indian world trade. However, unlike India-SAFTA trade, Indian imports from ASEAN grew significantly faster than Indian exports to ASEAN. Another important point to take into account is that imports from ASEAN grew much faster than Indian imports from the world. The faster growth in imports has led to a significant increase in India`s trade deficit with ASEAN, from less than $8 billion in 2009-10 to about $22 billion in 2018-19. ASEAN`s share of India`s total trade deficit increased from about 7% to 12% over the same period. In addition to the India-ASEAN ECSC, the Indeinem and Korean CEPAs were commissioned from 1 January 2010. In 2009-10 to 2018-19, bilateral trade between the two countries increased from about $12 billion to $21.5 billion and is more or less similar to trade in disinfaction with the world.
However, Indian imports from Korea grew much faster than exports to Korea. While Indian imports increased by about 8%, exports to Korea increased by less than 4%.
