Malaysia, the Chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) for 2025, is committed to upgrade and modernise the group's free trade agreement (FTA) with India, Malaysian Trade and Investment Minister Tengku Zafrul said after holding a video call with Indian Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal on Thursday.
Zafrul said that the discussions on the ongoing review of the ASEAN-India Trade in Goods Agreement (AITIGA) were the "focus" of the call.
Malaysia is also India's permanent coordinator from ASEAN on economic matters.
Goyal told his Malaysian counterpart that India was eager to "fast-tracking" discussions for the review of AITIGA, which have been ongoing since 2021.
"We also discussed furthering discussions on Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA) between both the countries," the Indian minister said.
The trade deal between India and the 11-nation (then a 10-country bloc) ASEAN grouping was signed in 2010. However, New Delhi has been seeking a review of it on the grounds that it's not getting reciprocal market access to some of the ASEAN markets amid a rising trade deficit and that third-country products are being routed to India through Southeast Asia.
According to official figures, the ASEAN region accounts for almost 11% of India's global trade, with bilateral trade being $121 billion in 2023-24 Financial Year (FY).
At a public event at New Delhi's Vanijya Bhawan last month, Goyal said that ASEAN didn't appear too keen to negotiate an FTA review with India.
Further, Indian officials have been quoted as saying in the media that New Delhi would terminate the trade pact with ASEAN altogether if the review wasn't completed by the end of this year, a deadline set by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the India-ASEAN Summit in Laos last September.