Swiss economics minister in India for final push on EFTA trade agreement

Switzerland and India have agreed on "the broad outlines of the EFTA-India trade agreement", Guy Parmelin said on the social platform X on Saturday. The economics minister was in Mumbai to press ahead with these negotiations, which have been going on for several years. Parmelin left the World Economic Forum in Davos to travel directly to India following "a last-minute invitation" from his Indian counterpart, Piyush Goyal. "It was there that we reached agreement, after 16 years of negotiations, on the broad lines of the EFTA-India trade agreement", Parmelin wrote on X. Speaking on Sunday to the news agency Keystone-SDA, the Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research explained that the EFTA states (Switzerland, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway) and India had agreed, among other things, on the broad outlines of patent protection, a controversial subject in the past. + Switzerland remains global patent leader "A new chapter on investment promotion is also to be...