Criticism against CEPA due to ignorance of draft, says Tharoor
June 6, 2010 05:22 pm
The main criticism against the Comprehensive Economic
Partnership Agreement (CEPA) between
Explaining the facts further, 54 year old Shashi Tharoor who previously served as the United Nations Under-Secretary General for Communications and Public Information and the Indian Minister of State for the Ministry of External Affairs and who is also known as a prolific author, columnist, journalist and a human rights advocate, stated that the CEPA has to be compared with another agreement, the Sri Lanka- India Free Trade Agreement which was signed several years ago.
Mr. Tharoor was in
The Free Trade Agreement between
Adding further, he said, “It must not be forgotten that
there are some trade agreements which turn out to be ‘trade creation
agreements.’ This is what happened to SFTA. Not only did trade go up in the
first year of agreement where
“It was also because the Indian government had genuinely accepted the position that there should be what we call an asymmetrical obligation where the larger country must accept a certain imbalance in the term of trade in order to benefit the smaller country to enjoy mutual benefit. CEPA too is based on the same principles.
“When I met President Mahinda Rajapaksa, he also told me
that part of the problem in the criticism against CEPA is that the critics do
not know what is in the document. The draft has not yet been made public in
Mr. Tharoor was among those who attended the Indian International Film Academy (IIFA) awards ceremony.
On IIFA, Mr. Tharoor said that holding such an event proved
that