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India and Australia have expressed their commitment for concluding the negotiations for expanding the scope of existing free trade agreement (FTA) by the end of this year with an aim to push the bilateral trade to $100 billion. On December 29, last year India and Australia implemented an economic cooperation and trade agreement (ECTA) and are now negotiating to expand its scope for a comprehensive economic cooperation agreement (CECA).

Commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal said ‘ECTA was the first stage of our economic engagement. We are now entering into phase-2 of our discussions where we are looking at much wider ambit of subjects and taking this into a CECA.’ He said huge opportunities are there to increase cooperation in areas like education, technology, audio-video services and sports. While Australia has some very fine technologies, best of education institutes and sports, he said India can offer in terms of its talent pool, manufacturing base and startup ecosystem.

On increasing agri trade with Australia, Goyal said that there are several areas of mutual interest, which are under consideration of agriculture ministries of both sides to resolve sanitary and phyto-sanitary (related with plans and animals) problems. He also said ‘there is an opening up of some elements of agriculture in the ECTA and with an open mind we will be looking at forward movement wherever there are areas of complimentarity and mutual benefit’. He said that India is open to negotiations and look to engage with the rest of the world from a position of strength and learn from the best practices.