The Economic Times

Indias billion-dollar trade juggernaut has an unwanted case of missing balance

Indias early FTAs promised a two-way trade highway, but 15 years later the traffic looks decidedly one-sided. Deficits with ASEAN, Japan and South Korea have ballooned as imports raced ahead of exports. Trade experts say the answer is not to shut the road, but to repair it from tariff imbalances and non-tariff barriers to poor FTA utilisation and costly inputs at home.