{"id":500,"date":"2017-05-13T15:38:43","date_gmt":"2017-05-13T15:38:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/indiafdiwatch.org\/?p=500"},"modified":"2017-05-13T15:38:43","modified_gmt":"2017-05-13T15:38:43","slug":"rcep-will-hurt-local-industry-and-allow-workers-exploitation-says-civil-society","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/indiafdiwatch.org\/?p=500","title":{"rendered":"RCEP will hurt local industry and allow workers\u2019 exploitation, says civil society"},"content":{"rendered":"

Copy of Article on Down to Earth<\/a><\/p>\n

The trade agreement is being negotiated in secrecy, but it is likely to favour big companies and threaten India\u2019s agriculture, industry and e-commerce sectors<\/p>\n

Negotiations over a proposed free trade agreement, Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), will have severe impacts on the state of agriculture and manufacturing industries in India, and may allow for exploitation of workers and natural resources in India, civil society representatives say.<\/p>\n

The 18th round of negotiations on RCEP is being held in Manila, Philippines among 16 countries that account for 50 per cent of the global population and 29 per cent of the world\u2019s GDP. These include 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)\u2014Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam\u2014and six other countries having existing free trade agreements with ASEAN: Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand.<\/p>\n

Civil society representatives say that the agreement in being discussed secretively. \u201cIn the past four years and to this day, no text has been made available to members of the public, parliamentarians, civil society or media,\u201d says Dharmendra Kumar, director of India FDI watch, a Delhi-based non-profit.<\/p>\n

The agreement will considerably reduce import duties for a range of goods in agriculture, manufacturing and service industries, allowing foreign companies to compete with domestic counterparts. According to India FDI Watch, RCEP mandates import duties in the range of 0-3% for member countries. India\u2019s current duty on industrial goods is 10 per cent at an average, and 32.5 per cent for agricultural products.<\/p>\n

Allowing exploitation<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cReduction of import duties to promote global value chain will lead to mass layoffs, low wages and further exploitation,\u201d says Gautam Mody, General Secretary, New Trade Union Initiative (NTUI).<\/p>\n

\u201cGlobal value chains thrive by exploiting workers who are paid low wages, tied to informal jobs with extreme job volatility, and offered no or declining social protection measures, all of which are necessary to ensure profits for the rich companies. RCEP undermines technological development in developing countries and hence does not work either for creating sustainable employment or for local value addition in developing countries\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n

Local agriculture, which is dominated by small and marginal farmers in India, will also feel the impact of the free trade agreement. K T Gangadhar, president of Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha (KRRS), a farmers\u2019 organisation, says, \u201cThe ASEAN has already devastated our plantation workers. The RCEP will have even stronger impacts on agricultural jobs. Not only will RCEP extract further access in plantation products for ASEAN, it will threaten livelihoods in sectors like dairy, meat and other agricultural products by allowing duty free imports of subsidised products from Japan, New Zealand and Australia,\u201d says Gangadhar.<\/p>\n

Reduction of duty is likely to put India at disadvantage in its trade ties with China. \u201cIndia has a large trade deficit (Rs 3.45 lakh crores in 2015-16) with China, which will increase after RCEP. Companies producing steel and heavy machinery have already raised the concern that this would lead to displacing of local manufacturing by Chinese imports,\u201d Dharmendra Kumar says. Garment, ceramics and electronics sectors will also feel the pressure due to cheaper Chinese imports.<\/p>\n

Upper hand for rich companies<\/strong><\/p>\n

Governments of developing countries will be restricted from making policies that regulate foreign investors, favour domestic industry, or change labour laws and wage policies, under the agreement.<\/p>\n

\u201cRCEP will include the infamous Investor-State-Dispute-Settlement Mechanism (ISDS) that allows foreign companies to challenge policies and judicial decisions in secret arbitration cases,\u201d says Adil Shariff, additional general secretary, Indian National Municipal and Local Bodies Workers Federation.<\/p>\n

He explains the implication of the agreement, with example,\u201cThere are numerous cases, for example, between Veolia (French company) and Egypt, that show how foreign companies can challenge any change in labour laws (such as the Minimum Wages Act or maternity benefit provisions in India) as it increases in their cost of operation. In addition to the compensation demanded by companies, the litigation itself is financially devastating. In one case, Philippines had to pay US$ 58 million, which it could have used for the vaccination of 3.8 million children,\u201d says Shariff.<\/p>\n

E-commerce sector at risk<\/strong><\/p>\n

The e-commerce chapter in RCEP will impose binding rules that will force developing nations \u00a0like India to give away data, a highly prized industrial resource, for free to big companies in Japan, New Zealand, Australia and China.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis will seriously affect millions of small independent offline retailers and street vendors in India, as well as SME manufacturing sector workers as digitised products will compete with physical goods made in India\u201d, says Dharmendra Kumar, who works with small retailers in India.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe wholesale duty-free import of goods by e-commerce giants like Alibaba in China will threaten local products developed by SMEs and domestic job creation in those segments,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Copy of Article on Down to Earth The trade agreement is being negotiated in secrecy, but it is likely to favour big companies and threaten India\u2019s agriculture, industry and e-commerce sectors Negotiations over a proposed free trade agreement, Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), will have severe impacts on the state of agriculture and manufacturing industries … Continue reading “RCEP will hurt local industry and allow workers\u2019 exploitation, says civil society”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/indiafdiwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/indiafdiwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/indiafdiwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indiafdiwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indiafdiwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=500"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/indiafdiwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":501,"href":"https:\/\/indiafdiwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500\/revisions\/501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/indiafdiwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indiafdiwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indiafdiwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}