India has called for an expeditious implementation of all the action-oriented collaborative elements under various pillars of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) and invited investors from IPEF partners to invest and benefit from the trillion dollar plus opportunity that India provides in the clean economy domain. The IPEF partners will next meet in-person in Singapore on 6 June, 2024 to discuss the Supply Chain Agreement, the Clean Economy Agreement, the Fair Economy Agreement, and the Agreement on IPEF, the Commerce ministry said on Thursday.
Addressing the first IPEF virtual ministerial meeting to place this year, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal highlighted India’s global production capacities in many critical sectors, which provide supply diversification opportunities for IPEF partners. This pertains to Pillar-II (supply chains resilience) agreement, which entered into force on 24 February 2024. Following the signing of the IPEF Supply Chain Agreement in November 2023, the agreement entered into force on 24 February 2024, after five partners deposited their instruments of ratification, acceptance, or approval. The IPEF partners are now working towards operationalising the agreement, including naming their representatives to the agreement’s three bodies (the Supply Chain Council, the Crisis Response Network, and the Labour Rights Advisory Board), electing chairs, and adopting terms of reference for each, as well as identifying their respective initial lists of critical sectors and key goods for cooperation.
The IPEF brings together 14 regional partners – Australia, Brunei, Fiji, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, the United States and Vietnam in a new model of economic cooperation whose negotiations began in late 2022. The Minister, alongwith US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, Thai Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Parnpree Bahiddha-Nukara along with the ministers from the other IPEF partners in welcoming the significant progress made since the substantial conclusion of the negotiations for the proposed IPEF Clean Economy Agreement (Pillar III). The next steps to deliver concrete outcomes under the Framework over the next several months may include several new lines of effort under the Clean Economy pillar, including the launch of four new cooperative work programmes.
The inaugural IPEF Clean Economy Investor Forum will be held in Singapore on 5-6 June 2024 and provide more details on the IPEF Catalytic Capital Fund which has planned commitment to provide USD 33 million in initial grant funding. These funds will be instrumental in catalysing up to USD 3.3 billion in private investment for climate infrastructure projects in IPEF economies party to the IPEF Clean Economy Agreement.
The Fund’s founding supporters include Australia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and the United States. The Private Infrastructure Development Group will administer and leverage the Fund to deploy concessional financing, technical assistance, and capacity building support to expand the pipeline of high quality, resilient, and inclusive climate infrastructure projects.
Goyal alongwith the IPEF partners also welcomed the headways made since the substantial conclusion of the Fair Economy Agreement (Pillar IV) and Agreement on IPEF in November 2023 and discussed the ongoing cooperative work ahead across the three proposed agreements.
The proposed Fair Economy Agreement aims to create a more transparent, predictable trade and investment environment across the Indo-Pacific. To achieve these goals, under the proposed agreement, the IPEF partners would work together to enhance their efforts to prevent and combat corruption including bribery, and support efforts to improve tax transparency and the exchange of information, domestic resource mobilization, and tax administration.
Following the substantial conclusion of the negotiations of the three proposed agreements in November 2023, the IPEF partners conducted an intensive legal review, including an in-person round held in Washington, DC., during 19-23 February 2024. The IPEF partners have also taken another significant step forward with the finalisation of the texts for the three proposed agreements. Going ahead, the IPEF partners will now undertake their respective domestic processes to prepare for signature of the agreements, followed by acceptance, approval, or ratification of the agreements.