India, Singapore Trade Doubles on Free Trade pact.

SINGAPORE: Buoyed by cuts in custom tariffs following a market opening agreement, trade between India and Singapore has seen a quantum jump of 98.6 per cent in the first nine months of 2010 over the same period last year.

The bilateral trade aggregated Dollar (Singapore) 22.68 billion (USD 17.4 billion) between January and September, according to data released today by the International Enterprise Singapore (IE Singapore).

Indian exports to Singapore increased by 49 per cent year-on-year to SGD 9.26 billion during the period, while imports from Singapore increased by 31 per cent to SGD 13.42 billion.

The two countries have been liberalising trade since 2005, which was further given a push when they implemented a trade opening pact with Asean.

Duties on over 2,700 product lines have been eliminated as part of these agreements.

The data clearly showed that the freeing of trade through a Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA) helped Indian exporters more than their counterparts in Singapore. CECA came into force in August 2005 and is being implemented in phases pushing the two-way trade.

Besides, industry sources said that the implementation of India-Asean free trade pact from January 2010, has furthered opened and enhanced commerce between the two nations.

Singapore is a member of the 10-nation Association of South East Asian nations.

Singapore's total exports grew by 25.5 per cent to SGD 355.32 billion during the first nine months of this year, IE Singapore said.

Source : economictimes.indiatimes.com