India Plans Committee to Ease Customs Norms for Boosting International Trade

India has initiated measures to reform customs procedures to speed up international trade.  The Indian government has set up a national committee on trade facilitation that will suggest and implement measurers to ensure seamless movement of cargo by addressing constraints like high transaction costs and poor infrastructure. There will be a 7 or 8 department national committee on trade that will look after all aspects of trade facilitation. India is all for trade facilitation and are working towards it as quickly and efficiently as possible. On July 31 India actually vetoed the trade facilitation agreement at the World Trade Organization, which sought to speed up global trade by reforming customs procedures, arguing there should be a parallel deal on food security. The goal of the trade facilitation requires all departments to be harmonized. The WTO trade facilitation pact was signed in December of 2013 and legally binds all 159 member-countries to standardize customs rules for faster more efficient movement of cross border cargo. This is in hopes to cut transaction cost for exporters. They are working towards ratifying the WTO TFA and need to make legal amendments, but are prepared to do so. During his US visit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told Barack Obama that trade facilitation was important for India and it expected the US' support in addressing India's concerns over public stockholding for food security. I feel that this is a great thing for world trade. At a population of roughly 1,260,740,000 people, 17.5% of the world population, and an increase in effectiveness and efficiency in international trade this will definitely benefit all countries. India may not be the biggest contributor to the international economy in today’s world, but due to these positive changes they will likely see their contributions to the international economy steadily increase over time.

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