After making sufficient progress on the terms of the UK’s exit from the European Union, negotiations will now move on the thorny issue of forging a future UK-EU trade and investment relationship. The negotiations on the future relationship will resume once the EU leaders adopt guidelines at an EU summit to be held in Brussels during March 22-23, 2018. For the UK, the second phase of Brexit negotiations will be much more difficult than the phase one agreement concluded in December 2017.

As planned, the UK will formally leave the…

Electronic Commerce (e-commerce) has emerged as a key issue in the run-up to the 11th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to be held in Buenos Aires in December 2017. A number of countries across the development spectrum have backed inclusion of e-commerce in the WTO. Although the nature of disciplines that these countries favour is not entirely clear, yet the proposals strongly suggest that they would prefer using e-commerce as a vehicle for trade liberalisation in goods and services.

The issue of e-commerce was introduced in the…

A major policy shift has been taking place in the Indian commodity derivatives market since September 2015, when the commodity regulatory body, Forward Markets Commission, was formally merged with the capital market regulator – the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). In June 2017, SEBI opened up the commodity derivatives markets to institutional investors for the first time by allowing hedge funds registered as category III Alternative Investment Funds (AIFs) to invest in commodity derivatives as ‘clients’.¹

The category III AIFs raise money from high net worth individuals and…

Currently, there are no multilateral rules on international investment. But there is a concerted push by China, Brazil, Russia and Argentina to start formal discussions on a multilateral instrument on investment facilitation at the World Trade Organization (WTO). In the past few weeks, five proposals have been submitted to the General Council – the highest decision-making body of the WTO – to initiate discussions on a multilateral instrument on investment facilitation with the intention of possible deliverables at the Ministerial Conference in Buenos Aires in December 2017. The five…

This e-pamphlet explains the proposed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a mega-regional free trade agreement at the door of Asia Pacific, in easy-to-understand format. It outlines India’s current position on key elements of the proposed pact and highlights key sectoral concerns on agriculture, trade in goods and services, intellectual property, public health and investment protection. The e-pamphlet provides links to ‘leaked’ texts from the negotiations and a list of additional resources.