Trade and Investment

By Trisha Agawarla

The Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's in his speech[1] at the Inaugural Session of the 46th AGM of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) held from 2nd to 5th May in Greater Noida, Delhi said“India has set itself a target of over 8% annual growth in our Twelfth Five Year Plan, which runs from 2012 to 2017. This is the rate of growth that the country achieved over the past decade. We are initiating measures to spur investment and to make India more attractive to investors both at home and abroad.”

The capitalist system is in a deep crisis. Since the 2008 financial crisis where the system nearly imploded, it has yet to fully recover. And instead, the crisis has spread and has deepened the food, economic, energy and climate crises. The deep systemic crisis is crystal clear evidence that the neoliberal regime must come to an end.

“Speedy” and “careless”—this is how Thailand’s civil society organizations describe the negotiating framework the Ministry of Commerce has drafted in time for the official start of the negotiation on the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the European Union (EU) on March 6 and 7.