Toronto: India and Canada target completing negotiations towards the comprehensive economic partnership agreement (CEPA) before the G20 Leaders’ Summit in Miami this year, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi undertaking a bilateral visit to seal the deal.
This was confirmed when Modi met Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in Evian, France, on the margins of the G7 leaders’ Summit on Tuesday.
Modi confirmed he may visit Canada by the end of the year. In statements prior to the start of the bilateral, he said, “You (Carney) are right in saying that we are very keen on a free trade agreement, and as you have invited me to visit Canada, I will also strive to come this year and complete this agreement before my arrival.”
Hindustan Times had reported about the forthcoming visit last month.
Carney, in his statement, said the “deadline” was to complete negotiations “by the G20”. “There is so much more to do together, there is one objective — it is to double our trade by the end of this decade,” he noted.
When the visit does occur, it will be the first standalone bilateral visit by the Indian PM to Canada since April 2015, when Stephen Harper led Canada. Modi never visited the country during Justin Trudeau’s decade-long tenure at Canada’s PM. Modi did, of course, come to the country in June last year, but that was for the G7 Leaders’ Summit in Kananaskis, to which he was invited by Carney. That invitation and their meeting on the margins of the summit at the Alberta resort spurred the reset in bilateral ties which has evolved into a renewal.
The two PMs met twice after that, making the Evian bilateral their fourth meeting in the span of a year on Tuesday. In November, on the margins of the G20 Leaders Summit in Johannesburg, they announced the launch of fresh negotiations towards the CEPA. Carney visited India in late February-early March and the leaders consolidated the renewal in relations with an ambitious joint statement, focused on partnership across multiple sectors.
