Toronto: India and Canada’s trade ministers held a virtual meeting this week to discuss the contours of forthcoming negotiations towards a comprehensive economic partnership agreement (CEPA).
The meeting was held between India’s Commerce and Industry Minister, Piyush Goyal, and Canada’s Minister of International Trade Maninder Sidhu. Goyal also agreed to lead a high-level trade and investment delegation to Canada in the new year.
In a post on X following the meeting, Goyal said, “We undertook initial scoping and broad discussions on the overall approach, contours, macro objectives, and modalities as part of preparations for the launch of CEPA negotiations.” He described the discussion as “productive”.
In a post, Sidhu said he met with Goyal to “further strengthen the commercial ties between Canada and India” and that they “discussed preparations to launch negotiations on a new Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA)”.
The announcement that fresh negotiations will be launched towards the CEPA came after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met his Canadian counterpart Mark Carney on the margins of the G20 summit in Johannesburg last month.
