$10 trillion before 2014, $60 trillion today: nine trade deals later, India's preferential market access has grown sixfold.
NEW DELHI: Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal told the 13th Annual Forum of the Public Affairs Forum of India on September 24, 2026 that nine trade agreements India has finalised over the past four to four-and-a-half years now grant Indian exporters preferential access to economies worth a combined $60 trillion in GDP. He contrasted this with what he described as India’s pre-2014 trade footprint, when all preferential and free trade agreements together covered economies worth just $10 trillion, framing the older approach as defensive and “scared to compete with the world.”
Goyal placed the $60 trillion figure within what he called a broader $70 trillion umbrella, combining India’s own economy with its trade partners, and pointed to a further pipeline of negotiations that could eventually push total preferential access to around $75 trillion, or roughly 75% of global trade.
Nine Deals, Different Stages of Completion
The nine agreements Goyal referenced span a considerable range of maturity. Some are long operational, including the India-Mauritius CECPA since 2021, the India-UAE CEPA since 2022 and the India-Australia ECTA, also from 2022. Others are more recent, such as the India-UK CETA, which went live in July 2025, and the India-Oman CEPA, operational since June 2026. The India-EFTA TEPA, signed in March 2024, carries a notable feature: a binding $100 billion investment commitment over 15 years from Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein. Perhaps most significant on paper is the India-EU FTA, finalised in January 2026 and covering over 96% of tariff lines, sometimes referred to informally as the “mother of all deals” given the EU’s economic scale.
The ninth agreement, a bilateral trade pact with the United States, remains the most closely watched and the least finished. Goyal described it as “almost done and dusted,” though that characterisation requires some unpacking.
What “Almost Done” With the US Actually Means
According to Goyal’s own account, technical negotiations on the first tranche of the India-US agreement have closed, but India is deliberately withholding execution and publication of the text until the US Trade Representative finalises a tariff structure that gives Indian exporters a clear price advantage over competing exporters, particularly Bangladesh, which benefits from Least Developed Country status, and Vietnam, which has its own active trade agreements. In labour-intensive sectors like textiles and leather, this competitive gap has historically hurt Indian exporters, making tariff parity a central Indian demand rather than a minor detail.
Complicating matters further, the negotiation has had to adjust to shifting American trade tools. After legal rulings restricted certain tariff measures under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, US authorities pivoted toward Section 301 investigations tied to forced labour and industrial overcapacity concerns. India secured a relatively favourable 10% benchmark on forced labour assessments, but pending overcapacity investigations still introduce uncertainty. Goyal is scheduled to meet US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer at the G20 Trade Ministerial in Milwaukee at the end of September, a meeting likely to determine how much longer this “almost done” pact stays unfinished.
Why Headline GDP Numbers Don’t Tell the Whole Story
It’s worth being precise about what a $60 trillion access figure actually means in practice, because headline GDP coverage and realised export value are quite different things. Comprehensive trade agreements typically eliminate tariffs on 90% to 98% of tariff lines, not all of them, with sensitive categories like agriculture and dairy frequently placed on negative lists or subject to quotas. Beyond that, exporters must satisfy Rules of Origin requirements, generally requiring 35% to 40% domestic value addition, to actually qualify for preferential tariffs, a compliance burden that has historically kept Indian exporters’ preference utilisation rates below 25%.
Non-tariff barriers add another layer of complexity. During the India-EU negotiations specifically, India had to navigate the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism and deforestation regulations, ultimately securing protections for domestic agriculture, expanded steel export quotas and a $500 million climate finance commitment to help cushion the adjustment.
A Deliberate Break From the RCEP Decision
Goyal also used the PAFI address to defend India’s 2019 exit from the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, arguing that joining would have created an effective free trade arrangement with China without adequate safeguards for domestic manufacturers. Because India already held FTAs with ASEAN, Japan and South Korea independently, walking away from RCEP allowed India to instead pursue what Goyal characterised as more balanced, bilateral negotiations with trusted partners, alongside an ongoing review of the ASEAN-India Trade in Goods Agreement to address existing trade imbalances.
What’s Coming Next
Beyond the nine finalised deals, Goyal outlined an active pipeline including an Early Progress Trade Agreement with Canada, bloc-wide talks with the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council expected later in 2026, an upgrade of India’s existing Chile agreement into a full Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, and newly finalised terms of reference for FTA talks with Mexico. Talks with Israel, meanwhile, have stretched out due to regional instability, while negotiations with Peru face friction over agricultural and mineral trade-offs.
For exporters and analysts alike, the real test of Goyal’s $60 trillion claim will show up gradually: in customs notifications that actually enforce reduced duties, in monthly export data broken down by destination market, and in whether India’s historically weak preference utilisation rates start climbing as MSMEs get better support navigating certificate-of-origin requirements through the government’s BHAVYA industrial parks and its National FTA Outreach Mission. Until those numbers move, the $60 trillion figure remains, at best, a measure of potential rather than proof of results.
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