India, US trade talks progressing; hope to work towards fair, equitable pact in near future: Goyal
New Delhi (PTI): Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal on Thursday said talks between India and the US for the proposed trade agreement are progressing, and expressed hope that both sides would work towards a fair and equitable agreement in the near future.
An Indian official team, headed by Commerce Secretary Rajesh Agrawal, was in Washington last week to hold trade talks with their US counterparts. The three-day talks ended on October 17.
"We are in dialogue with the USA, our teams are engaged. We recently had the Commerce Secretary visit the US, and he met with his counterparts. We continue to engage with them and talks are progressing.
"We hope to work towards a fair and equitable agreement in the near future," Goyal told Doordarshan in Berlin.
In February this year, leaders of India and the US directed officials to negotiate a proposed Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA).
They have fixed a deadline to conclude the first tranche of the pact by the fall (October-November) of 2025. So far, five rounds of negotiations have been completed.
Last month, Goyal also led an official delegation to New York for trade talks.
These deliberations are important as the relations between the two countries have been reeling under severe stress after the Trump administration imposed a steep 50 per cent tariff on Indian goods. It includes a 25 per cent additional import duty for buying Russian crude oil.
India has described these duties as "unfair, unjustified and unreasonable".
The talks halted for a brief period after the US announced high tariffs on Indian goods.
After a brief gap, Assistant US Trade Representative for South and Central Asia Brendan Lynch held talks with Indian officials in New Delhi on September 16. In that meeting, both sides agreed to push for an early and mutually beneficial conclusion of the agreement.
The proposed pact aims to more than double the bilateral trade to USD 500 billion by 2030 from the current USD 191 billion.
The US remained India's largest trading partner for the fourth consecutive year in 2024-25, with bilateral trade valued at USD 131.84 billion (USD 86.5 billion exports).
It accounts for about 18 per cent of India's total goods exports, 6.22 per cent in imports, and 10.73 per cent in the country's total merchandise trade.
India's merchandise exports to the US declined by 11.93 per cent to USD 5.46 billion in September due to the high tariffs imposed by Washington, while imports increased by 11.78 per cent to USD 3.98 billion during the month, according to the Commerce Ministry data.
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Indigo cancels 67 flights from multiple airports due to bad weather, operational issues
Mumbai (PTI): Domestic carrier IndiGo on Thursday cancelled 67 flights from multiple airports due to "forecasted" bad weather and operational reasons, according to the airline's website.
Of the 67 cancelled flights, only four were for operational reasons, and the rest were due to "forecasted" bad weather at various airports, including Agartala, Chandigarh, Dehradun, Varanasi, Bengaluru, among others, as per the website.
Aviation regulator, DGCA, has announced the period between December 10 and February 10 next year as the official fog window this winter.
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As part of the DGCA fog operations (CAT-IIIB) norms, airlines have to mandatorily roster pilots who are trained to operate in low-visibility conditions, as well as deploy a CAT-IIIB-compliant aircraft fleet for such operations.
Category-III is an advanced navigation system that empowers an aircraft to land under foggy conditions.
Category-III-A is a precision instrument approach and landing that enables a plane to land with a runway visual range (RVR) of 200 metres, while Category-III-B helps in landing with an RVR of under 50 metres.
IndiGo, whose operations are under DGCA monitoring after the cancellations of thousands of flights early this month, is already operating a curtailed schedule in compliance with the government's order.
Under its original winter flight schedule, the airline was permitted to operate 15,014 domestic flights per week, or about 2,144 flights per day, roughly six per cent higher than the 14,158 weekly flights it operated during the summer schedule of 2025.
However, after the massive disruptions, which saw the airline cancelling 1,600 flights on a single day on account of new rest norms for pilots, which allow more rest to the pilots, the government cut down the airline's domestic flight schedule by 10 per cent or 214 flights per day.
As a result of that, IndiGo can't operate more than 1,930 flights per day on domestic routes under its current winter schedule.
The Rahul Bhatia-controlled airline cancelled thousands of flights between December 1 and December 9 on account of a lack of proper planning, and crew shortage in implementing the new set of regulations for pilots' duty period and rest, which were put in place from November 1, thereby causing severe hardships to lakhs of air travellers.
Following this, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) formed a four-member panel, comprising Joint DG Sanjay Brahamane, Deputy Director General Amit Gupta, senior Flight Operations Inspector Kapil Manglik, and FOI Lokesh Rampal, with a mandate to identify the root causes of widespread operational disruptions at the Rahul Bhatia-controlled domestic carrier.
The panel, which has already grilled IndiGo CEO Pieter Elbers and Chief Operating Officer Isidre Porqueras as part of its probe, is expected to submit its report by this week.
Meanwhile, IndiGo, in a travel advisory on X, said, "Low visibility and fog over Bangalore has impacted flight schedule. We are keeping a close watch on the weather and doing our best where you need to be safely, smoothly".
Reacting to the advisory, an aggrieved passenger, in an X post, said, "My flight on December 20 from Bhubaneswar to Ahmedabad got delayed for more than five hours, and today my return flight from Ahmedabad to Bhubaneswar also got delayed more than three hours with the same excuse as bad weather. I am travelling with my senior citizen parents, and this delay is not acceptable. Need proper explanation, along with compensation".
