"India and SACU revive preferential trade agreement negotiations after 16-year gap"
Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA)
trade deal granting reduced (not zero) tariffs on a defined goods list between partners.
Southern African Customs Union (SACU)
world's oldest customs union (1910); five members sharing a common external tariff.
The Southern African Customs Union (SACU) — comprising South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho, and Eswatini — is the world's oldest customs union, established in 1910 and modernised under the SACU Agreement of 2002. It operates a common external tariff and a revenue-pooling formula that redistributes a significant share of customs receipts to the smaller, landlocked members. As a coherent economic bloc with shared trade governance, SACU represents the most institutionally developed regional grouping in southern Africa and a natural counterpart for structured trade negotiations.
India's economic engagement with Africa has evolved from an aid-and-solidarity framework into a more institution-driven partnership, anchored by the India-Africa Forum Summit (IAFS) process that began in 2008. That process institutionalised lines of credit, capacity-building programmes, and sectoral cooperation, while Joint Trade Committees (JTCs) have served as the principal government-to-government forums for reviewing trade flows and resolving market-access barriers. Despite this political scaffolding, no comprehensive trade agreement with any African regional bloc has been concluded. India's trade relationship with Africa has historically been characterised by raw-material imports — gold, diamonds, platinum-group metals — and manufactured-goods exports, a composition critics have likened to colonial-era patterns. Both sides have increasingly sought to reorient this toward value addition, technology transfer, and services cooperation.
A Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA) is a trade instrument under which partner countries extend reduced — though not necessarily zero — tariffs on a defined list of goods to each other, without extending those concessions to third parties. PTAs are less comprehensive than Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), which typically aim at eliminating tariffs across substantially all trade, and far narrower than Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreements (CEPAs), which additionally cover services, investment, and regulatory cooperation. PTAs are generally WTO-compatible as limited preferential arrangements and serve as a stepping stone toward deeper integration.
Terms of Reference (ToR) for a PTA define the scope, structure, and procedural rules of the negotiation itself — what product categories will be considered, how offers and requests will be exchanged, the timeline for rounds, and the dispute-resolution framework. …
Consider the following statements:
The India-Africa Summit
1.held in 2015 was the third such Summit
2.was actually initiated by Jawaharlal Nehru in 1951
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
Consider the following statements:
1.The value of Indo-Sri Lanka trade has consistently increased in the last decade.
2.'Textile and textile articles' constitute an important item of trade between India and Bangladesh.
3.In the last five years, Nepal has been the largest trading partner of India in South Asia.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
Consider the following statements regarding the Southern African Customs Union (SACU):
1.SACU comprises South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho, and Eswatini.
2.SACU operates a common external tariff shared among all its members.
3.SACU is the world's oldest functioning customs union in its current form.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
Which of the following best distinguishes a Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA) from a Free Trade Agreement (FTA)?
Assertion (A): India and SACU chose to negotiate a Preferential Trade Agreement rather than a comprehensive Free Trade Agreement.
Reason (R): A PTA's limited scope — covering only selected goods tariffs and excluding services, investment, and intellectual property — makes it politically easier to conclude when one party has significant domestic manufacturing concerns.
Which of the following is correct?
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