KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 14 — Malaysia can still increase its access to the market in India even if the republic withdraws from the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) negotiations.
The Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) said this can be achieved through the review of the Malaysia-India Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (MICECA) and Asean-India Free Trade Agreement (AIFTA).
If India withdraws from the RCEP, this would lessen the impact in terms of market size, said the ministry in a written reply in the Dewan Rakyat yesterday.
This was in response to a question from Selayang MP William Leong Jee Keen who wanted to know about the status of the negotiations and the impact of India’s withdrawal from the RCEP.
According to the World Bank data in 2018, India’s participation in RCEP will enable Malaysia to have access to 47.5 per cent of the market size or almost half of the world’s population, that is, 3.6 billion people.
MITI said this year, five RCEP virtual meetings had been conducted.
At the same time, the 10th intersession meeting at the ministerial level was also held virtually on June 23.
The meetings were conducted to finalise several outstanding issues.
— Bernama
