Highlighting the strong complementarities between India and Israel and the limited competition across sectors, CII President Rajiv Memani said discussions on the proposed India–Israel Free Trade Agreement (FTA) are expected to move faster following the signing of the terms of reference (ToR) on Thursday.
The ToR was signed in Tel Aviv by India’s Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal and Israel’s Economy Minister Nir Barkat.
Calling the bilateral relationship “strong” and anchored in a shared sense of history and struggle, Memani told CNBC-TV18 that trust has consistently characterised engagements between the two countries. Their economic strengths, he said, are notably complementary.
The “real strength” of the partnership lies in startups and innovation — with Israel being a leading high-tech startup nation and India emerging as a leading scale-up nation. Israel spends 6.5% of its GDP on R&D and has the highest proportion of researchers per thousand people, making it an attractive partner for India in advanced manufacturing, AI and emerging technologies.
Memani also emphasised opportunities in sustainability, including water, agriculture and energy transition, along with scope for deeper defence collaboration given India’s rising defence spend and Israel’s high defence-to-GDP ratio. On the IMEC corridor, he described the concept as “powerful”, but said geopolitical stability in West Asia is essential for its progress.
Also Read: India, Israel sign terms of reference to launch free trade agreement negotiations
He noted that India now has established FTA formats, such as with the EFTA bloc, and is negotiating with the US, EU and the UK. The challenge, he suggested, was whether the Department of Commerce has the bandwidth to push several FTAs simultaneously. Even so, FTAs offer a strong sovereign-to-sovereign framework to deepen trust and economic integration.
Memani underlined that the partnership opportunity with Israel is still “huge”, as bilateral trade remains modest. India is Israel’s second-largest trading partner in Asia. In FY24–25, India’s exports to Israel fell 52% to $2.14 billion, while imports declined 26.2% to $1.48 billion. Total bilateral trade stood at $3.62 billion.
(Edited by : Sheersh Kapoor)
