The Three-pronged Strategy of India’s Preferential Trade Policy a Contribution to the Study of Modern Economic Treaties

Before the inception of the WTO, India generally did not pursue any regional economic agreement route to promote trade or to achieve any other goal. In the Post-Cancun Ministerial period, however, it has progressively entered into a number of preferential trade arrangements with several Asian, as well as nonAsian partners. Looking into India’s regional economic integration approach, the current analysis makes an attempt to identify the major determinants behind the shift in the country’s interests, and the policy implications of this change. We conclude that India’s approach towards preferential trade can be depicted as a three-pronged PTA strategy: it can compensate for loss in the goods sector through gain in services or within the goods sector; loss in some sectors (due to tariff reduction) is to be compensated through effective market access of other products in which India has a potential advantage; or identification of India’s specific interest in the partner country (which may be commercial, regional development or political).