KOCHI: Asserting that India cannot remain in economic isolation for ever, Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Sunday said that the decision to sign a Free Trade Agreement with ASEAN was not a sudden decision as India had been looking to strengthen trade and diplomatic co-operation with ASEAN from the 1990s.

“Right from the ‘Look East Policy’ envisaged in 1990s, our country has been entering into talks with ASEAN to establish a strong bilateral agreement in trade and the present FTA is not a sudden decision,” he said while delivering a talk on ‘Indo- ASEAN Free Trade Agreement’ organised by the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC).

“By signing the agreement we have not surrendered our economic sovereignty to anyone.

Above all we have excluded 418 items from the pact to protect our domestic industry. Our domestic interests will not be jeopardised by this FTA,” he said.

Mukherjee said the apprehensions of the farmers would be cleared once they understand the essence of the agreement. “We have enough time to build our domestic sector and make them competitive in the international market. We have imposed several clauses in the agreement to safeguard our interests. To protect our domestic manufacturing interest we have a provision to impose an anti-dumping duty if we find the imports affecting our domestic production,” he said.

To protect the domestic agriculture production a provision for imposing a safeguard duty on agricultural imports is also included, he added. “Nothing prevents us from using these two provisions to protect the domestic industry and the agriculture sector,” he said.

Mukherjee said the FTA was signed considering the importance of exploring virgin export markets in the current disturbing economic scenario.

“Our exports are now largely targeted at US and European markets. 69 percent of our exports was to economies in distress. ASEAN is a new strong export market with whom we have cheap road, rail, sea and air connectivity,” he said.

Union Minister for Overseas Indian Affairs Vayalar Ravi, Union Minister of State for Agriculture K V Thomas, KPCC president Ramesh Chennithala and UDF convener P P Thankachan were present on the occasion.