Kolkata: India was looking for a Free Trade Agreement with South Africa, Egypt and some other African countries to bolster trade relations, Joint Secretary of Ministry of Commerce S Ramasundaram said on December 6.

"We may initially start with Preferential Trade Agreement, which could be extended to Free Trade Agreement in future," Ramasundaram said while addressing seminars on Focus Africa and Focus Latin American Countries organised by Engineering Export Promotion Council (EEPC) in Kolkata.

He said government would consider removing some of the restrictions in existing Market Development Assistance (MDA) and Market Access Initiative (MAI) to assist the exporters. Ramasundaram said one of the barriers in increasing trade relations with African countries was a 'gap of knowledge' about each other. A number of steps would be taken during the coming few days with a focus mainly on interaction to reduce that 'gap'.

He said unlike Latin American countries, where India had hardly any presence, in Africa we had a fairly good presence with offices in 18 of the 50 sub-Saharan countries.

PTI