New Delhi: India and the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) Wednesday signed the Terms of Reference (ToR) to formally launch negotiations for a Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA), almost two decades after discussions began for the pact, that will cover eight chapters, including trade in goods, rules of origin, customs procedures, dispute settlement and sanitary and phytosanitary measures.Commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal said the pact should be finalised within the next few months while respecting the sensitive sectors of both sides and formal negotiations expected to begin within a month.Namibia, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho and South Africa are SACU members. The bloc is world’s oldest customs union and this is India’s first ToR signing with the African region.“India will not touch sensitive issues on your side as we would expect reciprocity and your consideration on sensitive issues on the Indian side,” Goyal said, adding that the proposed agreement should be “balanced, practical” and initially focus on “low-hanging fruits” where India and SACU can complement each other.The Indian Cabinet had approved the PTA negotiations in 2006 but the talks were aborted after a few rounds of negotiation in 2010.You Might Also Like:Noting that India is looking at greater engagement with the international trading community, Goyal said: “I'm surethe SACU countries will benefit immensely,as will India, with a fair, equitable, and balanced agreement-a preferential trade agreement-to begin with-that we arehoping to finalize in the next few months…Deal is happening better late than ever.”Bilateral trade stands at around $18-20 billion. Both sides expect the trade agreement to boost bilateral commerce by 50-60%.You Might Also Like:While he insisted that speed is necessary for outcomes, Goyal said he was not “at all advocating haste.”The two sides are targeting concluding negotiations within a year, although officials are looking to complete the process soonerIndia is the second largest supplier to the SACU group of countries with companies present in several sectors such as health and pharma, IT, automotive manufacturing, infrastructure development.Goyal said India can play an important role to supply affordable medicines besides creating new talent in the African subcontinent.Commerce secretary Rajesh Agrawal said that more chapters can be added as negotiations progress if both sides agree to expand the scope of the agreement.He said India and SACU as “complementary regions” and expressed hope that negotiations would start soon and proceed on a fast-track basis.“Amid global trade uncertainty, timely economic partnerships can provide a very strong signal to global trade and impetus to global trade”, he said.“India already has strong development partnership with Africa and already extended unilateral tariff preference to African LDCs. The PTA with SACU will further help Indian Industry in building a strong trade partnership with Africa across sectors such as automobile, pharma, critical minerals, energy amongst others,” said Deep Kapuria, Chairman, The Hi-Tech Group.