India Australia Economic & Cooperation Trade Agreement Comes into Force

New Delhi: India Australia Economic and Cooperation Trade Agreement (ECTA) has come into force. The agreement will provide duty-free access to a number of Indian goods across different sectors in Australia benefitting the Indian manufacturing industries and also creating 10 lakh jobs.

Over one lakh Indian students will also benefit from post-study work visas.

Union Minister for Industry and Commerce Piyush Goyal said it’s a win-win situation where India will get cheaper raw materials which will help the country in becoming more competitive to serve the world market and also help the local market with better quality goods with affordable prices providing a good job opportunity in goods, merchandise and services in India.

Mr Goyal said Australia too, which is largely dependent on imports from most of their finished products will benefit hugely from the agreement as they will start getting much more finished goods from India.

He said the Indian IT sector will start saving billions of dollars as the agreement will also eliminate the double taxation on IT services which was actually making India less competitive and the sector was losing on profitability. Mr Goyal said India will get access to nearly 100 per cent access of the duty-free market in Australia in the next few years.