RCEP would have been extremely detrimental to Indian industry, says Rakesh Mohan Joshi of IIFT

China’s increasing footprints even without a preferential deal is a big concern for Indian industry and if China were to get a preferential deal where tariffs are lower than the current level then that would be a curtain call for the industry. This was one of India's objections, said Dhar.

The second objection was related to e-commerce — especially data localization and local servers’ issue. So these two issues were top priority on which there was lot of disquiet among both industry and government officials, added Dhar.

According to Mohan, the RCEP would have been extremely detrimental to the Indian industry because currently a lot of Chinese manufacturing goods and consumer electronics dominate Indian market and it would have only increased under the RCEP.

Mohan said that with the RCEP dairy products would have been dumped into India by New Zealand and Australia despite India being the largest producer of milk in the world because of quality issues, which would have impacted Indian small and marginal farmers.

“I am happy that concerns of small farmers and manufactures have been taken into account,” said Mohan.

According to Dhar, India has not invested in our domestic sectors and have not made our agriculture and manufacturing efficient. So, if we are not prepared to face global competition then by opening markets, we would lose jobs, he added.