India and member nations of South African Customs Union (SACU) will commence negotiations on a free trade agreement (FTA) within the next four months, government officials here said on Monday.
The five nations comprising SACU are South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho and Eswatini.
Officials here said that preliminary round of talks between India and the SACU secretariat have been completed which decided the overall framework of the proposed negotiations and resuming it over the next four months with both sides willing to engage on a trade pact.
It might be recalled India-SACU talks on a trade agreement had been initiated in 2020 but no headway was achieved then with Indian governments now claiming that fresh rounds of negotiations will need to be re-started ‘from scratch’.