Time to revisit FTAs to fire up electronics: Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad

India should revisit free trade agreements (FTAs) with several countries, as they continue to hamper the country’s plan to emerge as a manufacturing powerhouse for electronics, said Ravi Shankar Prasad, the Union Minister of Communications, Electronics & Information Technology, and Law & Justice.

The country will also not compromise on data sovereignty, Prasad said, as the provision for mandatory data localisation under a proposed data protection law continues to draw criticism from large US technology and finance companies.

“I am keen to push India’s case for strategic electronics, medical electronics, but some FTAs have been done with some countries… I do not wish to take the names of those countries, and I regret to say those FTAs were executed completely disregarding the interest of India,” Prasad said during the ET Startup Awards on Friday.