India-ASEAN relations, as they exist today, are in some ways, a reconfiguration of age-old ties that date back 2,000 years. Only the modes of trade have changed. Instead of the silk route, countries now use tech-oriented routes to link up.
ASEAN, the latest version of what was the Asian trade network ages ago, is an effort to establish cooperation in the economic, social, cultural, technical, educational and other fields among its member countries, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei Darussalam, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia.
For a relationship that began warming up only about a decade ago, the India-ASEAN partnership has been trotting at quite a fast pace.
- India became a sectoral dialogue partner of ASEAN in 1992. The sectors were trade, investment, tourism and science and technology.
- Mutual interest led ASEAN to invite India to become a full dialogue partner of ASEAN during the fifth ASEAN summit in Bangkok in 1995 and a member of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in 1996.
- India signed an agreement in October 2003 for a free trade area (FTA) with Thailand. Under the agreement, 84 items can be imported from Thailand from April 2004 at 50 percent of the normal rate of duty prevailing in India. The pact with Thailand is to be followed by a similar agreement with Singapore and, ultimately, the entire ASEAN region and India is committed to aligning its peak tariff to East Asian levels by 2005.
- India has also been engaged in negotiations to form a Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA) with Singapore.
- Sub-regional cooperation has accelerated too. The Mekong-Ganga Cooperation (MGC) and the BIMST-EC (Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand Economic Cooperation) are indicators to this effect.
- In 2003, India acceded to the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC) in South-East Asia, signed a declaration to combat international terrorism, and agreed on comprehensive economic cooperation to step up their current trade turnover of $12 billion.
The deepening of ties is beginning to show in the intra-country trade figures. India-ASEAN trade in 2002-03 was about $9.76 billion, about four times the 1993-94-trade figure of $2.5 billion.
India's exports to ASEAN were $4.61 billion while imports came to about $5.15 billion in this period.
Growth in India's exports to ASEAN in recent years has been much higher in comparison to other destinations. India's trade with the world in 2003 stood at $114.13 billion, ASEAN accounting for 8.56 percent of India's global trade.
Relative importance of India's trade with ASEAN Figures in $million, for the year 2002-03 |
India's total global trade 114,131.56 |
India's total trade with ASEAN
9,768.71
|
Percentage share of India's trade with ASEAN
8.56%
|
India’s total global export
52,719.43 |
India’s total export to
ASEAN
4618.54 |
8.76% |
India’s total global import
61,412.13 |
India’s total import to
ASEAN
5150.17 |
8.39% |
Source: Export Import Data Bank |