Japan intends to continue efforts to persuade India to remain in the initial 16-country framework for the agreement of the regional trade talks. However, as there is still strong opposition to the RCEP within India, it remains to be seen whether the negotiations will go smoothly.

At a news conference after a Cabinet meeting on Friday, Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Hiroshi Kajiyama said that he would visit India from Tuesday to Wednesday.

In addition, he stated, “[Japan] will seriously discuss the matter together with India to aim for the signing [of the RCEP] within 2020,” indicating that he will aim to persuade India to take concerted action with other negotiating countries.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe also plans to visit India from Dec. 15 to 17. Abe likely will urge India to return to the negotiating table.

India’s announcement of its exit from the RCEP took place at the leaders’ meeting for the deal in Bangkok on Nov. 4. Initially, there was a view among the other participating countries that the withdrawal announcement was a tactic to gain a negotiating advantage for India. But since then, the Indian government has been making comments to justify the country’s exit from the RCEP, strengthening its stance of not hesitating to actually withdraw.

A source close to the Thai government said, “We came to gradually feel how serious India is [about exiting the RCEP].”

In India, there is strong fear that if the RCEP is realized, a high volume of low-priced industrial and other products would flow into India from China, and India’s domestic industries could suffer.

At the leaders’ meeting, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was said to have stated that under the current circumstances, the RCEP could put Indian companies and consumers at a disadvantage, and that Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) would not have allowed India to join the RCEP.

Since the day following India’s withdrawal announcement, there have been a large number of voices from local newspapers and organizations in India applauding the announcement. They include one from English-language Indian paper The Economic Times, stating that the prime minister was protecting India. According to local newspapers and other sources, opposition to the RCEP still continues in India.

Japan sees the participation of India as indispensable for the RCEP because India is a huge market with a population of more than 1.3 billion people, and it is expected to see future economic growth. An increasingly urgent concern for Japan is that without India, China could enhance its relative influence.

Meanwhile, India is said to strongly seek the introduction of safeguards to prevent a sudden increase in the volume of imported products as a condition for the country to participate in the RCEP. It is said that India is taking such a step with China in mind, a stance that likely sets India apart from the other negotiating countries.

In addition, through the RCEP negotiations, India asks others to create an environment in which high-quality Indian human resources in the information technology sector will be able to succeed overseas. As the main workplaces for these Indian workers will be English-speaking countries, such as RCEP participants Australia and New Zealand, a Japanese government official said that Japan’s leverage is limited.

Under such circumstances, China and some ASEAN countries began to take a stance of accepting the RCEP coming into effect with just 15 participating countries, without India.

It is said that the negotiation schedule from now on has yet to be decided. The Japanese government is concerned about the future of the negotiations, as a government official said that if nothing is done, Japan could find itself as one of the minority countries that wish to stick to the 16-country framework.

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RCEP

A large-scale economic cooperation framework for which negotiations started in 2013. There are 16 negotiating countries – Japan, India, the 10 ASEAN countries, China, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. The 16 countries account for half of the global population and about 30% of global trade value.

The Ministry of Commerce on Wednesday released a report on the results of its assessment of a potential FTA deal between Cambodia and the EAEU.

Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia secretary-general Ken Loo told The Post on Thursday that the Kingdom’s garment and footwear sectors would gain a new market if an FTA is signed.

“We will have duty-free access to exports, but we don’t know when we’ll reach the FTA. That is all I can say,” he said.

Cambodia Rice Federation vice-president Chan Sokheang said the agreement will boost the competitiveness of the Kingdom’s export-rice processing industry among its neighbours.

“Our export market will grow further and will not rely on just the European and Chinese markets. We have to open up more markets.

“Today, our premium varieties of rice are in very fierce competition with those of our neighbouring countries. The agreement will allow us to boost our competitiveness,” he said.

Speaking at the report launch ceremony, Minister of Commerce Pan Sorasak said the benefits of the FTA noted in the study include industrial diversification and expansion of financial services, transport, digital economy and agricultural services.

“An FTA will enable the two parties to increase economic cooperation, trade in goods, services and investment.

“We expect to increase trade and investment opportunities and mutual investment. Cambodia can increase its garments and textiles exports, agricultural products and other goods,” he said.

The EAEU is an economic bloc covering Eastern Europe and comprises five countries – Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia. The bloc has a combined population of 176 million and posted a gross domestic product of $2.5 trillion in 2016, Sorasak said.

Last month, Prime Minister Hun Sen discussed the agreement with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev during the 14th East Asia Summit in Thailand.

Speaking at the Asean Business and Investment Summit last month, Medvedev said as the EAEU had signed an FTA deal with Vietnam in 2015 and with Singapore on October 1, it is currently in talks with “other partners in Asean” about possible FTAs as well, Singapore’s The Straits Times reported.

He also called for joint efforts with Asean to tackle monopolies by high-tech companies to allow a “healthy competition and the introduction of new promising ideas”, The Straits Times said.

Ministry of Commerce secretary of state Tek Reth Kamrong told reporters in March that the EAEU has provided tariff-free access for 46 Cambodian made products for three years due to the Kingdom’s Least Developed Countries (LDC) classification.

Though preferential status will last until Cambodia has graduated from its LDC rank, Reth Kamrong said the negotiation for an FTA deal with the bloc is a good initiative.

EAEU tariff preferences granted to Cambodian goods include rice, silk, textiles, meat, vegetables and coffee.

Garment, textile and footwear industry exports rose 13.18 per cent year-on-year during the first nine months of this year to more than $7.973 billion, data from the General Department of Customs and Excise shows.

This is in response to an order issued by the Energy Policy Administration Committee on December 4.

ERC deputy secretary-general Khomgrich Tantravanich explained that charging station operators were keen for the government to set new and higher fee rates to make their business more commercially viable as currently only a small number of electric vehicles (EV) are using the service.

The operators have proposed that the government determine the higher rate to make it worthwhile for them to continue business expansion, he added.

The current rate is based on a time of use (TOU) basis, which sees the charging fee varying according to the peak time from 9am to 10pm on weekdays to the off-peak time after 10pm on weekdays and during weekends.

The charging fee at peak time and off peak is Bt4.10 per unit and Bt2.60 per unit, respectively.

The administration committee has also approved the ERC’s proposal to solve the problem of 14 renewable power plants which failed to start operation on the commercial dates due to uncontrolled factors.

The ERC proposed that the administration committee put off the dates of the commercial operations for these plants on a case-by case-basis. This proposal will also need approval from the National Energy Policy Committee.

These renewable power plants have a total capacity of 300 megawatts. Construction is almost complete on most of them but several will not probably not be finished until 2021. One reason for the delay has been cited as the time needed to reach an understanding with communities where the plants will be located.

If they fail to start operation on time, their licences will be terminated.

A second new committee will also be set up to manage the contract for this project, Kanit Sangsubhan, the committee’s secretary general, said, adding that this was in line with the proposals of the EEC management panel chaired by Finance Minister Uttama Savanayana.

On October 24, the State Railway of Thailand (SRT) and Eastern High-Speed Rail Linking Three Airports Co., Ltd, led by Charoen Pokphand Holding and strategic alliances, signed a Public Private Partnership (PPP) deal to develop the high-speed rail linking Don Mueang, Suvarnabhumi and U-Tapao airports.

The EEC committee also appointed a panel to study and draw up the plan to establish the waste-driven power plants in the EEC and the power purchase plan. The panel consists of representatives from the Interior Ministry, Energy Ministry, PTT Global Power Synergy (GPSC). It will have to submit the progress of the study within next three months.

The plants are expected to be completely set up in next few years.

He estimated that the hikewould see business operators paying an additional Bt30 billion in wages a year to labourers.

From this point of view, the rate is acceptable and not too high, he said, adding that it was speculated earlier that the daily minimum wage would increase by between Bt10 and Bt15.

The National Wage Committee announced today (December 6) that it will raise the minimum wage by Bt6 in nine provinces and Bt5 for others.

The committee will propose the new wage for Cabinet approval as soon as possible as it intended the increase to take effect on January 1, 2020. Supant Mongkolsuthree, chairman of the Federation of Thai Industries (FTI), said he believes the industrial sector could cope with the new rate in spite of the ongoing economic deceleration.

The hike, he said, would mostly affect SMEs and the farm sector as they are labour-intensive sectors while major industrial firms could adapt by deploying automation/robotics system.

A so-called environment bonus will jump by 50% to as much as 6,000 euros ($6,680) per electric vehicle and the auto industry will continue to cover half the cost, Merkel’s chief spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said in a statement. The changes will take effect this month and run through 2025, according to Bernhard Mattes, president of Germany’s VDA auto lobby.

“It will therefore be possible to provide support for another 650,000 to 700,000 electric vehicles,” Seibert said. The measures were agreed Monday evening in Berlin between Merkel and officials from automakers, parts suppliers and labor unions, including the chief executives of Volkswagen AG, BMW AG and Daimler AG.

The accord came a day after Merkel visited a revamped VW electric-car plant in Zwickau, eastern Germany. The chancellor has come under fire for failing to make more progress in curbing greenhouse-gas emissions, while VW — the world’s biggest carmaker — has invested billions in the shift to electric vehicles.

Merkel’s Climate Protection Program 2030, unveiled in September, targets as many as 10 million electric cars on German roads by that year, a goal that most automotive experts say is unrealistic even with generous subsidies. As of the start of the year, there were about 420,000 electric and hybrid-electric vehicles in a national fleet of 47 million, according to the the University of Duisburg-Essen’s Center for Automotive Research.

Merkel called the challenges facing the industry “a paradigm shift in mobility that has never been realized in automotive history.”

Germany is closing in on Norway for European leadership with sales of almost 53,000 all-electric cars this year, according to the KBA, or federal motor transport authority. Per-capita it remains far behind the smaller country, and it’s still unclear how many German customers will ultimately switch to electric cars in a country with a rich automotive heritage centered on combustion engines.

Subsidies make a difference because higher costs for development and batteries drive up the price of an electric car. VW’s ID.3, for example, will start at just under 30,000 euros ($33,200 U.S.), while the least-expensive version of the new combustion-powered Golf will be sold for less than 20,000 euros.

The government’s push to promote electric cars includes boosting the number of public charging stations to 50,000 within two years, Seibert said. Automakers will help fund 15,000 of the stations by 2022. BMW has said it will install 4,100 charging points at its German locations by 2021, with about half being open to the public.

“I see this as an absolute chance to now increase demand, which will be good for us,” Klaus Rosenfeld, chief executive officer of German automotive supplier Schaeffler AG, said in an interview Tuesday.

“Anything that helps to achieve this mobility transformation, to increase consumer demand, is good for us, so in that sense we welcome the decision made today,” he added.

Merkel said in a podcast Sunday that the government’s focus is on promoting electric vehicles, but that it’s also open to hydrogen technology. It wants 1 million charging stations to be in place by 2030, she said.

Merkel’s $60 billion climate package failed to restore her reputation as a champion of the environment. Critics branded the measures, such as extra taxes on flights, as insufficient for a “climate emergency,” while economists criticized carbon price proposals as too shy an approach to spur emissions cuts.

Big industry and some union leaders slammed Germany’s go-it-alone approach, saying it would harm jobs and businesses.

Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer, the director of Center for Automotive Research, estimates a tally of about 5 million all-electric and hybrid car registrations by 2030. Reaching that level would be an achievement, he said in September.