India’s Commerce Minister, Piyush Goyal, will not attend a ministerial meeting in Beijing this week due to an extension to the Indian parliamentary session, hampering China’s push to seal a massive free trade deal with its regional partners, said the South China Morning Post.
At the end of the week, Beijing will host a meeting to discuss the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and India will be represented by Commerce Secretary Anup Wadhawan.
The RCEP is made up of 10 countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) as well as Australia, Japan, China, India, New Zealand and South Korea.
The absence of Goyal could cast a shadow over the fate of the proposed agreement, which would encompass around one-third of the world’s economy and almost half of its population, reported the South China Morning Post.
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