With a view to effectively disseminate information on the Free Trade Agreements(FTAs) signed by India as well as to feed into the process of review of these FTAs, the Department of Commerce regularly conducts FTA outreach programmes across the country. Ten outreach programmes, were conducted in 2013-14 and nine outreach programmes in 2014-15 at different location of the country. The participants in these outreach programmes were primarily exporters and importers in that region. The focus of these outreaches was on the major FTAs signed by India, namely the ASEAN-India Trade in Goods Agreement; the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreements (CEPA) with Japan and Korea and the Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA) with Malaysia. The FTA outreach exercise was continued during 2015-16 with the focus on around 34 industrial clusters so as to provide the requisite information to the smaller and medium enterprises on the opportunities that could be availed under the FTAs.

In order to protect the interests of agriculture sector, the agreements provide for maintaining sensitive/negative lists of items on which limited or no tariff concessions are granted under the FTA. The Government has largely adopted a conservative policy on agricultural products by maintaining a large number of them in the negative list of FTAs. In this context, inputs are obtained from stakeholders including administrative ministries. The government remains open to considering any specific issues concerning the agricultural sector including producers.

This information was given by the Minister of State (Independent Charge) in the Ministry of Commerce & Industry Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman in a written reply in Lok Sabha today.

FTA negative lists preserve agricultural protections while outreach programmes inform exporters and SMEs about preferential market opportunities. The Department of Commerce runs outreach programmes to inform exporters, importers and SMEs about India's major FTAs and to gather feedback; FTAs include a conservative safeguard for agriculture through negative lists that limit tariff concessions on specified items, with stakeholder inputs guiding those lists and the Government open to specific agricultural concerns.