The much-awaited visit to India by Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau is likely to take place during February 19-23. It is also expected that the long-pending Foreign Investment Protection and Promotion Agreement (FIPPA) will be signed during the visit.
The Canadian Prime Minister, who came to power in November 2015, was expected to visit India last year. However, as Trudeau was still in a settling-in mode, it was expected that he would visit India this year. But that too did not happen, according to sources.
Following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit there in April 2015, a lot of high-level visits under the Trudeau administration have been happening at a regular pace. The single biggest focus of the administration was to secure business and trade ties with India, which have been moving at a slackening pace, sources told
Canada is hoping to sign the FIPPA that is being negotiated since 2006.
During his last visit to India in November, Canada’s Minister for International Trade François-Philippe Champagne had told BusinessLine in an interview that the negotiations on the FIPPA are almost complete and it is ready to be signed.
Champagne, who had brought with him the biggest ever business delegation to explore investment opportunities here, had said that Canadian investors are finding it difficult to invest here in the absence of an FIPPA.
Canada is also keen to expedite talks on the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), which is being negotiated for almost a decade and has missed several deadlines for conclusion. Both sides have also been sparring over whether to conclude the FIPPA together with the CEPA or individually. However, it seems that these pacts will now be concluded separately even as India and Canada have decided to fast-track the talks on CEPA as both governments will be facing elections in 2019.
Canada has expressed concern over India’s model on Bilateral Investment Treaties, especially with the provision of Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism, which lays down that a foreign investor cannot go for international arbitration without exhausting all domestic options.
The two countries are also expected to take their defence ties to the next level during the visit. Earlier this year, Canada’s Defence Minister Harjit Singh Sajjan had said that Canadian defence firms are looking to expand in India. Both sides had also discussed the possibility of setting up a joint working group on counter-terrorism and enhancing naval linkages.