India–Thailand trade agreements four instruments, four different statuses
Rendered from the All Frontier Global FTA registry · researched from official sources, August 2026 · every figure below carries a numbered source
MULTI-INSTRUMENT
Unlike the single-instrument EFTA TEPA record, 'India-Thailand trade agreements' spans FOUR overlapping but legally distinct instruments: (1) the bilateral Early Harvest Scheme (EHS, in force), (2) the bilateral full FTA/CECA negotiations (stalled, not concluded), (3) the ASEAN-India FTA / AITIGA (Thailand's coverage as an ASEAN member, in force for goods since 2010 and under a live review), and (4) the BIMSTEC FTA framework (signed 2004, still not concluded 22 years later). This record treats each separately per the netcup skeleton's own structure rather than forcing one status label. [3][5][13][8][11][29]
AIFTA (via ASEAN)In force, goods pillar since 2010
Headline tradeUSD 20.93 billion, CY2025[8]record high, Embassy of India Bangkok
The four instruments
Early Harvest Scheme
India-Thailand Free Trade Agreement — Early Harvest Scheme (EHS)
Sub-component of the Framework Agreement for Establishing Free Trade Area Between the Republic of India and the Kingdom of Thailand, signed by commerce ministers in Bangkok on 2003-10-09, covering goods, services, investment, and economic cooperation.
Finding: In November 2001, the Prime Ministers of India and Thailand established a Joint Working Group (JWG) to study FTA feasibility; the study concluded a bilateral FTA was 'feasible, desirable and mutually beneficial.'
Confidence: medium — single secondary source (eximguru), undated conclusion
Status
IN FORCE / OPERATIONAL
As of: 2026-08-20
Confidence: high — corroborated by an official DGFT document plus two independently-dated 2026 secondary trackers
deepbeez.com's 2026-dated trade outlook page states comprehensive CECA negotiations 'remain incomplete as of August 2026, with the EHS continuing to function independently' — i.e., EHS specifically still running on its own track.
Signed Date: 2003-10-09
Signed Location: Bangkok
Entry Into Force Date: 2004-09-01
DGFT Appendix 2A (official): 'India and Thailand have signed protocol to implement Early Harvest Scheme under India-Thailand Free Trade Agreement on 01.09.2004.' Corroborated by eximguru, the Embassy of India Bangkok, deepbeez, and indiasworld.in, all independently citing September 2004.[1][2][3][4][16][17]
Entry Into Force Conflict:
Alternative Claim: howtoexportimport.com states the EHS 'commenced March 1, 2004' with a fully specified Jan-2004-based tariff phase-down schedule (50% cut Mar 2004-Feb 2005, 75% cut Mar 2005-Feb 2006, 100%/duty-free from Mar 2006), and separately says the Framework Agreement 'entered into force thirty days after both parties exchanged diplomatic notes.'
Resolution: Not reconciled. The September 2004 cluster is both official (DGFT) and more numerous; the March 2004 claim is recorded as a lower-confidence minority source rather than discarded, since it includes granular schedule detail not found elsewhere.
Confidence: low for the March 2004 variant
Product Coverage
Primary Count: 82
commerce.gov.in official page 'List of 82 items under the Early Harvest Scheme'; DGFT Appendix 2A also frames the scheme around this figure; Beacon Filing's 2026 tracker independently states 82.
Count Conflict:
Variant 83: Multiple secondary/journalistic sources (ORF, Oct 2025; DD News, Apr 2025; Embassy of India Bangkok; indiasworld.in) describe the scheme as covering 83 products, some explicitly framing it as '82, expanded to 83 over time.'
Variant 84: howtoexportimport.com states 'Annex-I lists 84 specific items eligible for preferential treatment.'
Resolution: Not reconciled to one number. 82 is used as the primary confirmed figure because it is the number on the official Indian government list page itself; 83 and 84 are recorded as commonly-repeated variants, plausibly reflecting a later minor list amendment that was not independently dated/sourced in this pass.
Finding: Grokipedia states approximately 35-40% value-addition in the exporting country is required, with concessions phased over three to five years.
Confidence: low — single AI-generated-encyclopedia source, not independently verified against a primary customs notification in this pass
Note: See unsourced_gaps.
Bilateral Full FTA CECA
India-Thailand Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA) — the full/comprehensive bilateral FTA beyond the Early Harvest Scheme
Same 2003-10-09 Framework Agreement; a Trade Negotiating Committee (TNC) was formed to negotiate the comprehensive agreement covering goods, services, investment, rules of origin, and dispute settlement beyond the 82 EHS items.[3][5][13][8][11][29]
Status:
Current State: STALLED / NOT CONCLUDED
As of: 2026-08-20
Confidence: medium-high on the qualitative 'stalled' finding — independently corroborated by deepbeez.com's August-2026-referencing outlook page ('Negotiations for a full CECA remain stalled... comprehensive negotiations between India and Thailand remain incomplete as of August 2026') and by the complete absence, across this entire research pass, of any 2020s-dated report of an active or scheduled bilateral CECA negotiating round.
Note: This directly confirms the task's stated premise that full bilateral FTA negotiations are long-stalled.
Negotiation History:
Rounds Claimed: 17
Rounds Source: eximguru.com: '17 Rounds of negotiations have so far been held.'
Rounds Confidence: low-medium — the source page is undated, so this figure cannot be pinned to a specific year; general context (the framework's early-2010s activity level and the later total silence in reporting) suggests this reflects a mid-2010s snapshot, but that inference is not independently confirmed.
Last Confirmed Activity: 2023-04-20 — most recent bilateral trade-committee-level meeting identified in this pass is a 'Joint Trade Committee' meeting held in New Delhi on this date (Embassy of India, Bangkok). It is not clear from the source whether this JTC meeting is part of the CECA negotiating track specifically, or a separate bilateral trade-consultation mechanism.
Confidence Last Activity: medium — single source, ambiguous relationship to the formal CECA/TNC track
Why Stalled:
Finding: Grokipedia attributes the stall (which it dates to 'since 2006') to disputes over negative lists excluding sensitive sectors (automobiles, dairy) from liberalization, non-tariff measures including sanitary/phytosanitary (SPS) standards, and concerns from Indian agricultural industry about import surges prompting safeguard measures that limited deeper commitments.
Confidence: low — sourced only to Grokipedia (an AI-generated encyclopedia), NOT independently corroborated by an official government source or a named-author journalistic account in this pass.
Corroborating Context: Not a direct confirmation, but consistent in spirit: the BIMSTEC-track record (see bimstec_fta.historical_stall_point) independently documents a specific India-Thailand dispute over 'professional market access and duty cuts' at the BIMSTEC 20th TNC meeting in 2015 — showing India-Thailand bilateral friction over market access is a recurring, at-least-partially-corroborated theme, even though that specific incident is on the BIMSTEC track, not the bilateral CECA track.
Note: Recorded as a plausible-but-unverified explanation, not an established fact. See unsourced_gaps.
Finding: Around the April 2025 BIMSTEC Summit / Modi-Shinawatra bilateral meeting, India and Thailand reportedly 'pledged to negotiate enhanced FTAs' (ORF, Oct 2025).
Confidence: low-medium — vague phrasing; not clear whether this refers to reviving the dormant bilateral CECA specifically, or refers to the separately-tracked AITIGA (ASEAN-India) review, or both. Not treated as confirmation that bilateral CECA talks have resumed.
Relationship to AIFTA:
Finding: With the bilateral CECA dormant, India-Thailand goods trade beyond the 82 EHS items is governed in practice by the ASEAN-India Trade in Goods Agreement (AITIGA), since Thailand is an ASEAN member — consistent with the skeleton's claim that 'Normal Track products fall under AIFTA framework instead.'
Confidence: medium — directionally well-supported by the fact that AITIGA is the live, actively-reviewed mechanism, but no source explicitly states this substitution as an articulated legal/policy position; it is an inference from the state of the two tracks.
Finding: Thailand's own Department of Trade Negotiations (DTN) FTA framework dropdown lists 'TIFTA' (Thailand-India FTA) as a distinct tracked framework, separate from 'AIFTA' (ASEAN-India). Querying the DTN negotiation-status tracker for TIFTA returned 'no data found' (ไม่พบข้อมูล).
Confidence: low-medium — confirms Thailand's negotiating apparatus still formally designates a bilateral India track by name, but the empty-tracker result is ambiguous: it could reflect genuine dormancy, or simply a query/session limitation on this site. Not treated as conclusive either way.
AIFTA ASEAN India
ASEAN-India Free Trade Area (AIFTA) — Thailand's coverage as an ASEAN member state
This record covers AIFTA only as it bears on Thailand's status; a full independent verification pass on the separate netcup aifta.php skeleton page was out of scope here.[2][15][26][11][18][25][27][28]
Components
Trade in Goods AITIGA:
Signed Date: 2009-08-13
Entry Into Force Date: 2010-01-01
Confidence: high — DGFT Appendix 2A (official)
Thailand Note: Thailand was among the first ASEAN states to implement the agreement (Invest India, medium confidence).
Trade in Services and Investment:
Entry Into Force Date: 2015-07-01
Confidence: medium — single secondary source (iasgyan.in), specific and plausible but not independently cross-checked against an official ASEAN or Indian government primary document in this pass
AITIGA Review Upgrade
ONGOING / NOT CONCLUDED as of 2026-08-20
Start: approximately September 2022 (india-briefing/ORF, medium confidence)
Meeting Timeline
1st & 2nd review meetings: finalized Terms of Reference and negotiating structure
Confidence: medium — iasgyan.in, undated
2024-02-18/19
3rd review meeting, New Delhi: negotiations formally initiated
2024-07-29/31 (per iasgyan.in) — CONFLICTS with a separate claim of a Feb-2025 5th Joint Committee meeting in Jakarta (indiasworld.in)
5th review meeting, Jakarta, Indonesia
Confidence: low — unresolved date conflict, possibly two different meeting series (negotiation round vs. Joint Committee session) rather than a true contradiction
9 rounds of negotiations completed
As of: approx. October 2025 (ORF publish date)
Confidence: medium
~2025-08 (mid-month)
10th round scheduled
Confidence: medium — not confirmed as having occurred
2026-07-06/10
13th ASEAN-India Trade in Goods Agreement Joint Committee meeting plus sub-committee sessions (Customs Procedures & Trade Facilitation; National Treatment & Market Access; Rules of Origin), New Delhi — review still incomplete, sub-committees urged to expedite outstanding chapters
Confidence: high — PIB, official
Target vs Actual:
Target: India and Thailand/ASEAN pledged in April 2025 to complete the AITIGA review by end-2025 (ORF, Oct 2025).
Actual: As of the 13th Joint Committee meeting (2026-07-06/10, PIB official), the review remained incomplete — the end-2025 target was evidently missed, though the PIB release does not explicitly acknowledge a missed deadline.
Finding: 'Weak Rules of Origin clause in the AIFTA... remains inconclusive, despite nine rounds of negotiations' — flagged as the central blocking issue by ORF (Oct 2025). India has separately signaled it 'may even terminate the agreement if ASEAN countries fail to revisit tariff lines to address trade distortions.'
Confidence: medium — single reputable secondary source, notable/specific claim
Finding: Thailand reportedly expressed skepticism toward deepening AIFTA in 2025 deliberations, driven by concern that accelerated tariff reductions and regulatory harmonization could undermine local manufacturing competitiveness.
Confidence: low — sourced only to deepbeez.com, a source this record found to be unreliable on quantitative claims (see conflicts); included as a qualitative, non-numeric claim rather than omitted, but flagged accordingly.
Finding: Bilateral trade between India and ASEAN (the 10-member bloc, not Thailand alone) reached USD 128 billion in FY2025-26, with ASEAN accounting for approximately 11% of India's global trade.
Confidence: high — PIB (official), explicitly labeled FY2025-26
Members: Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Thailand
Framework Agreement:
Signed Date: 2004-02-08
Signed Location: Phuket, Thailand
Operational Date: 2004-06-30
Confidence: high — bimstec.org, official secretariat site
Scope: Progressive elimination of tariffs and non-tariff barriers in substantially all trade in goods, plus liberalization of services trade and investment facilitation.
Status:
Current State: NOT CONCLUDED — still under negotiation, component-by-component
As of: 2026-08-20
Confidence: high
Headline Framing: 22 years elapsed since signing (2004) with no final agreement on goods and services as of the 2025-04-03/04 BIMSTEC Summit (ThePrint, official-statement-sourced), and no evidence found of conclusion since.
Current Component Status per BIMSTEC Org
Trade in Goods
Text finalized; Rules of Origin annexures remain under negotiation.
Latest Meeting:
Date: 2025-03-25
Event: 22nd Working Group meeting, held virtually, Dhaka
Customs Cooperation
Under negotiation.
Latest Meeting:
Date: 2025-12-02
Event: 3rd Working Group meeting, held virtually, Dhaka
Dispute Settlement:
Finding: Draft text finalized by legal experts.
Trade in Services:
Finding: Eight negotiating rounds completed; not concluded.
Investment:
Finding: Eight negotiating rounds completed; not concluded.
Trade Facilitation
Three rounds completed.
Latest Meeting:
Date: 2025-03-19
Event: 3rd meeting, held virtually, Dhaka
Confidence: high — all sourced directly to bimstec.org, the official BIMSTEC Secretariat site[19]
Event: 20th Trade Negotiating Committee (TNC) meeting, Bangkok. Negotiations stalled: India demanded new tariff-reduction formulations, citing the 2004 base agreement as outdated. Disputes specifically emerged between India and Thailand regarding professional market access and duty cuts.
Confidence: medium — reasonably detailed secondary account (ORF), not independently cross-checked against an official TNC communique
Event: India's Commerce & Industry Minister Piyush Goyal, at the BIMSTEC Business Summit in New Delhi, stated 22 rounds of negotiation had been held since 2004, with the last round in 2018 (six years prior), progress moving at a 'very slow pace,' and said 'we need to pause and have a relook at the track where we are going.' He proposed member states consider a preferential trade agreement (PTA) instead of a comprehensive FTA, and asked the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) to develop recommendations.
Confidence: high — dated, on-the-record ministerial statement reported by Business Standard
Event: 6th BIMSTEC Summit, Bangkok. 'Bangkok Vision 2030' roadmap document adopted. Bhutan's Foreign Minister D.N. Dhungyel publicly called for 'early conclusion' of the BIMSTEC FTA, noting 21 years had elapsed since the 2004 framework with no final goods/services agreement, though six working groups had made incremental progress. PM Modi held bilateral talks with Thai PM Paetongtarn Shinawatra at the same summit; India-Thailand ties were elevated to a strategic partnership on 2025-04-03.
Confidence: high — corroborated across ThePrint and DD News, both dated
Additional Context: Coincided with U.S. reciprocal-tariff announcements (26% on Indian exports), reported as adding urgency to regional trade-integration alternatives.
Note: The 'Bangkok Vision 2030' document's own text/roadmap detail was not independently retrieved in this pass — see unsourced_gaps.
Trade Context
BIMSTEC Wide Fy2023 24:
Finding: India's total trade with the other six BIMSTEC members was USD 44.32 billion in FY2023-24.
Confidence: medium-high — independently corroborated by two secondary sources (Drishti IAS and, separately, the Business Standard report of Piyush Goyal's statement)
Finding: Thailand is BIMSTEC's largest single trade partner for India: India's exports to Thailand USD 5.04 billion, imports from Thailand USD 9.91 billion (total USD 14.95 billion) in FY2023-24. Bangladesh is second-largest (exports USD 11.06B, imports USD 1.84B).
Confidence: medium — Drishti IAS, secondary; this figure also appears independently on deepbeez.com's first-fetched page, adding modest corroboration
The task referenced 'india-thailand-fta.php', which does not exist in the netcup pull. The actual skeleton at that location is 'india-thailand-fta-ehs.php' (confirmed via directory search); treated as the spine source for this record.
UNLIKE the EFTA skeleton (which was badly stale), this skeleton's core claims held up well under verification: 'In-force since 2004 · 82-product Early Harvest Scheme · full-FTA negotiations stalled', 'Full-FTA negotiations launched 2003 stalled', and 'bilateral Normal Track products fall under AIFTA framework instead' are all directionally CONFIRMED by primary sources (DGFT, commerce.gov.in). The skeleton contains no factual reversal of the kind found in the EFTA case.
What the Skeleton Got Right:
EHS in force since 2004 — confirmed (DGFT: implemented 2004-09-01).
82 products — confirmed as the official DGFT/commerce.gov.in figure (though secondary sources commonly cite 83; see conflicts).
Full-FTA negotiations launched 2003, stalled — confirmed directionally; the 2003-10-09 Framework Agreement covers both EHS and full-FTA negotiations, and no source found in this pass shows the bilateral CECA concluding or holding a dated round since roughly the mid-2010s.
Normal Track / Sensitive List substitution via AIFTA — directionally consistent with AITIGA being the live mechanism actually governing most India-Thailand non-EHS goods trade today.
What the Skeleton Omitted:
BIMSTEC entirely — the skeleton (an EHS-focused deep-dive page) does not mention BIMSTEC at all, despite Thailand being a founding BIMSTEC member and BIMSTEC FTA negotiations directly involving India-Thailand-specific disputes (see bimstec_fta.historical_stall_point). This record adds that strand per the task instruction.
Any sourced date, round count, or reason for the full-FTA stall — the skeleton asserts the stall as a bare fact with no dates or mechanism; this record adds sourcing and flags what remains unverified.
Trade flows
No fewer than six differently-scoped India-Thailand bilateral trade-value claims were found in this pass, on Indian-fiscal-year, calendar-year, and partial-year bases, from sources of varying reliability. Per the provenance rule they are recorded separately below and NOT averaged or blended. A cross-check (annualizing the one clean partial-year figure) suggests the lower, older figures and the higher, newer figure may reflect real growth over 2023-2025 rather than pure contradiction — but this is a plausibility argument, not a confirmed reconciliation.
{'source': 'deepbeez.com', 'finding': "This aggregator was fetched twice (different URL variants) and gave THREE mutually-inconsistent figures for overlapping periods: one page's 'FY2023-24' (USD 14.95B) matches Drishti IAS's independent BIMSTEC-context figure; the same page's 'Calendar Year 2024' figure (USD 16.52B) does not arithmetically match its own stated imports+exports breakdown for that year (USD 13.72B + USD 4.88B = USD 18.60B, not USD 16.52B); and a second fetch of a differently-pathed URL on the same domain labels the ORF-matching USD 16.75B figure as '2024' instead of 'FY2023-24'. Additionally, deepbeez's claimed FY2025-26 full-year import figure (USD 9.8B) is smaller than IBEF's own partial-year (April-November 2025 only) import figure for the same fiscal year (USD 9.94B) — which is arithmetically impossible for a partial figure to exceed a full-year one. deepbeez's unique quantitative claims are treated as low-confidence/unreliable throughout this record; only claims independently corroborated elsewhere are given medium confidence."}
India-Thailand bilateral trade, calendar year 2025 (full year) — described as a record high — Embassy of India, Bangkok (official)[8]
Measure
Value
Total Trade
USD 20.93 billion
India Exports to Thailand
USD 5.06 billion
Thai Imports to India
USD 15.87 billion
Basis: Calendar year 2025, USD, goods (services not specified) · accessed 2026-08-20
PRIMARY / most-recent-full-year candidate in this record: it is the latest complete-year figure found, from an official Indian government source, and is internally arithmetically consistent (5.06 + 15.87 = 20.93). However, it is a large, single-sourced jump versus all other cited years and was not independently cross-checked against DGCIS. Plausibility check: annualizing IBEF's partial FY2025-26 figure (USD 13.27B over April-November 2025, 8 months) projects to roughly USD 19.9B for a full fiscal year — reasonably close to this USD 20.93B calendar-year figure, lending it some independent support rather than treating it as an outlier error. Given the same Embassy website was found to show visibly stale (2016) data on a different sub-page, this figure should be treated as plausible-but-unconfirmed pending a DGCIS/Department of Commerce direct check.
Basis: Indian fiscal year 2025-26, partial (8 of 12 months), USD, goods · accessed 2026-08-20
NOT a full-year figure — explicitly labeled 'till November 2025' in the source. Retained because it is the most recent, most credibly-sourced data point, and because it exposes the deepbeez FY2025-26 claim (see reliability_flag) as almost certainly wrong.
India-Thailand bilateral trade, FY2023-24 (Indian fiscal year) — variant A — Observer Research Foundation (ORF), published 2025-10-06[11]
Measure
Value
Total Trade
USD 16.75 billion
India Exports to Thailand
USD 4.8 billion
India Imports From Thailand
USD 11.95 billion
Trade Deficit
USD 7.15 billion
Basis: Indian fiscal year 2023-24, USD, goods · accessed 2026-08-20
Internally consistent (4.8 + 11.95 = 16.75). Conflicts directly with variant B below for the same nominal period.
India-Thailand bilateral trade, FY2023-24 (Indian fiscal year) — variant B — Drishti IAS, in BIMSTEC-trade context (independently, deepbeez.com cites the identical total for what it labels 'FY 2023-24')[21][13]
Measure
Value
Total Trade
USD 14.95 billion
India Exports to Thailand
USD 5.04 billion
India Imports From Thailand
USD 9.91 billion
Basis: Indian fiscal year 2023-24, USD, goods · accessed 2026-08-20
Internally consistent (5.04 + 9.91 = 14.95) and appears on two independent sites, giving it more corroboration than variant A by source count — but the two variants cannot both be correct for the same label. Not reconciled in this pass.
India-Thailand bilateral trade, calendar year 2023 (full year) — DD News (Doordarshan News, Government of India), article dated 2025-04-24[12]
Measure
Value
Total Trade
USD 16.04 billion
India Exports to Thailand
USD 5.92 billion
India Imports From Thailand
USD 10.11 billion
Basis: Calendar year 2023, USD, goods · accessed 2026-08-20
Internally consistent (5.92 + 10.11 = 16.03, rounds to 16.04). Official Indian broadcaster, but the underlying figures are not further attributed to a named statistical agency in the source.
Both countries have set a target of increasing bilateral trade to USD 35 billion by FY2026-27.
Confidence: high that the target was stated; this is a target, not a trade-flow result
Milestones
2001-11
Joint Working Group (JWG) established by the Prime Ministers of India and Thailand to study FTA feasibility; concludes an FTA is feasible, desirable, and mutually beneficial.
Confidence: medium
2003-10-09
Framework Agreement for Establishing Free Trade Area Between India and Thailand signed in Bangkok, covering goods, services, investment, and economic cooperation; establishes the Early Harvest Scheme and a Trade Negotiating Committee for the comprehensive FTA/CECA.
Confidence: high
2004-02-08
Framework Agreement on the BIMSTEC Free Trade Area signed in Phuket, Thailand.
India-Thailand Early Harvest Scheme enters into force, covering 82 items.
Confidence: high
~2006
Full India-Thailand CECA negotiations reported to have effectively stalled (per Grokipedia; not independently dated elsewhere in this pass).
Confidence: low
2009-08-13
ASEAN-India Trade in Goods Agreement signed.
Confidence: high
2010-01-01
ASEAN-India Trade in Goods Agreement (AITIGA) enters into force; Thailand among the first ASEAN states to implement it.
Confidence: high
2015-07-01
ASEAN-India Trade in Services Agreement and Investment Agreement enter into force, completing the three-pillar AIFTA.
Confidence: medium
2015-09-25
20th BIMSTEC Trade Negotiating Committee meeting, Bangkok — negotiations stall; India-Thailand-specific disputes over professional market access and duty cuts surface.
Confidence: medium
~2018
Last BIMSTEC FTA negotiating round before a multi-year lull, per Piyush Goyal's August 2024 statement.
Confidence: medium-high
~2022-09
AITIGA review/upgrade negotiations begin.
Confidence: medium
2023-04-20
India-Thailand Joint Trade Committee meeting, New Delhi — most recent bilateral trade-committee meeting identified in this pass.
Confidence: medium
2024-02-18/19
AITIGA review 3rd meeting, New Delhi — negotiations formally initiated.
Confidence: medium
2024-08-07
India's Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal publicly calls for BIMSTEC members to 'relook' the FTA track (22 rounds since 2004, last in 2018); proposes a PTA alternative to a full FTA.
Confidence: high
2025-03-19
BIMSTEC Trade Facilitation Agreement, 3rd Working Group meeting, virtual, Dhaka.
Confidence: high
2025-03-25
BIMSTEC Trade in Goods Agreement, 22nd Working Group meeting, virtual, Dhaka.
Confidence: high
2025-04-03/04
6th BIMSTEC Summit, Bangkok — 'Bangkok Vision 2030' roadmap adopted; Bhutan's FM calls for early BIMSTEC FTA conclusion (21 years unconcluded); Modi-Shinawatra bilateral meeting; India-Thailand ties elevated to strategic partnership.
Confidence: high
~2025-08 (mid)
AITIGA review 10th negotiating round scheduled (occurrence not independently confirmed).
Confidence: medium
2025-12-02
BIMSTEC Customs Cooperation Agreement, 3rd Working Group meeting, virtual, Dhaka.
Confidence: high
2026-07-06/10
13th ASEAN-India Trade in Goods Agreement (AITIGA) Joint Committee meeting plus sub-committee sessions, New Delhi — review still incomplete; end-2025 completion target evidently missed.
Confidence: high
2026-08-20
Record compiled. Confirmed as of this date: EHS in force/operational; bilateral CECA still stalled; BIMSTEC FTA still not concluded; AITIGA review still ongoing.
Confidence: high
Sources disagree
Recorded exactly as the registry states each disagreement — the conflicting values, the organisations behind them, and how this record handles it.
Sources disagree
EHS Item Count
EHS product count is given as 82 (DGFT official Appendix 2A; commerce.gov.in's own official list page; Beacon Filing's 2026 tracker), 83 (ORF, DD News, Embassy of India Bangkok, indiasworld.in — several explicitly framing it as '82, expanded to 83'), or 84 (howtoexportimport.com, citing an 'Annex-I' list).
How this record handles it: Use 82 as the primary confirmed figure, since it is what appears on the Indian government's own official EHS list page. 83 and 84 are recorded as commonly-repeated variants in instruments.early_harvest_scheme.product_coverage.count_conflict; not resolved to one number, matching the EFTA record's precedent for unresolved minor count discrepancies (chapter_count_14_vs_15).
Sources disagree
EHS Entry Into Force Date
DGFT (official) and most secondary sources place EHS entry into force at 2004-09-01. howtoexportimport.com instead states the scheme 'commenced March 1, 2004' with a detailed but singly-sourced phase-down schedule.
How this record handles it: Use 2004-09-01 as primary (official, multiply corroborated); the March 2004 claim is retained as a flagged low-confidence variant, not discarded, since it carries schedule detail found nowhere else.
Sources disagree
Trade Figure Fy2023 24 Two Variants
Two incompatible USD figures both labeled 'FY2023-24': USD 16.75B (exports 4.8B / imports 11.95B — ORF, and matching a second deepbeez.com page mislabeled as '2024') versus USD 14.95B (exports 5.04B / imports 9.91B — Drishti IAS's BIMSTEC context, corroborated by a different deepbeez.com page).
How this record handles it: Not reconciled — both retained in trade.series as separate labeled variants (A and B) per the provenance rule; neither blended nor discarded.
Sources disagree
Trade Figure No Single Latest Full Year
No single, independently-reliable, clearly-labeled complete-fiscal-year (FY2024-25 or FY2025-26) or complete-calendar-year (CY2024) India-Thailand bilateral trade figure was found that is directly comparable in rigor to the PIB-sourced 'USD 128B ASEAN-wide FY2025-26' figure. The best 'latest full year' candidate — Embassy of India Bangkok's CY2025 USD 20.93B — is official but singly-sourced and represents a large jump versus all other cited years.
How this record handles it: The CY2025 figure is presented as the primary/headline candidate in trade.series, with an explicit plausibility cross-check (annualized IBEF partial-year data lands close to it) offered as partial support, but flagged as unconfirmed against DGCIS. A page build should present this trade figure with visible caveats rather than as a bare confirmed number.
Sources disagree
Deepbeez Source Reliability
deepbeez.com, fetched via two different URL paths, produced three mutually-inconsistent trade figures for overlapping periods, including one page where its own stated imports+exports breakdown does not sum to its own stated total, and a claimed FY2025-26 full-year import figure smaller than IBEF's own partial-year (8-month) import figure for the same fiscal year — an arithmetic impossibility.
How this record handles it: deepbeez.com is flagged throughout this record as a low-reliability aggregator. Its claims are retained only where independently corroborated by another source (e.g., the FY2023-24 USD 14.95B variant, corroborated by Drishti IAS) or where explicitly flagged as low-confidence standalone claims (e.g., Thailand's 2025 AIFTA skepticism).
Sources disagree
AITIGA 5th Meeting Date
iasgyan.in dates the AITIGA review's '5th meeting' to 2024-07-29/31 in Jakarta; indiasworld.in separately states a '5th Joint Committee meeting' was scheduled for February 2025, also in Jakarta.
How this record handles it: Not reconciled — plausibly two different meeting series (negotiating round vs. Joint Committee session) rather than a genuine contradiction, but this distinction was not confirmed in this pass. Recorded as an unresolved precision conflict, consistent with the EFTA record's treatment of the suspension_timeline_15_vs_20_years conflict.
Sources disagree
Bilateral CECA Stall Reason Single Sourced
The specific reasons the bilateral India-Thailand CECA stalled (negative-list disputes over autos/dairy, SPS standards, agricultural safeguard concerns) are sourced only to Grokipedia, an AI-generated encyclopedia not independently corroborated by an official or named-author source in this pass.
How this record handles it: Retained as a flagged low-confidence explanation in instruments.bilateral_full_fta_ceca.why_stalled rather than omitted or asserted as fact.
Not yet verifiable
What the registry could not source, listed exactly as it states it — not gaps filled from memory or inference.
Any bilateral India-Thailand CECA negotiating round confirmed after the undated '17 rounds' eximguru figure — no source in this pass shows a specific dated CECA round in the 2020s.
An authoritative (official or named-author) explanation for why the bilateral CECA specifically stalled — only Grokipedia's account was found; the BIMSTEC-track 2015 India-Thailand friction over professional market access is suggestive but not a direct substitute source.
A single, independently reliable India-Thailand-specific complete-FY2024-25 or complete-FY2025-26 trade figure directly comparable to the PIB-sourced ASEAN-wide USD 128B FY2025-26 figure.
EHS Rules of Origin value-addition threshold (Grokipedia's unverified ~35-40% claim) — not confirmed against a primary customs notification.
Explicit acknowledgment (or non-acknowledgment) by India/ASEAN that the AITIGA review's pledged end-2025 completion target was missed — the July 2026 13th Joint Committee press release does not address this directly.
The full text/roadmap detail of the 'Bangkok Vision 2030' document adopted at the April 2025 BIMSTEC Summit — only secondhand characterizations of its existence were retrieved.
Conclusive confirmation of whether Thailand's DTN 'TIFTA' negotiation-status tracker showing 'no data found' reflects genuine dormancy or a site/query limitation.
Direct confirmation from Thailand's own Ministry of Commerce or DTN (as opposed to India-side and multilateral-secretariat sources) on the bilateral CECA and EHS status — Thai-side primary verification in this pass was limited to the DTN FTA-framework list (confirming 'TIFTA' is tracked) and could not be deepened due to the site's JavaScript-rendered/session-dependent structure.
Whether the commerce.gov.in 'framework-agreement-with-thailand' parent status page (as opposed to its 82-items sub-page, which was reachable) currently displays any additional status text — the parent URL structure could not be resolved via direct fetch in this pass, likely because commerce.gov.in serves its main navigation as a JavaScript single-page application not renderable by the fetch tool used.