The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII)'s WTO and Other Trade Agreements Committee is finalising a set of guidelines for signing FTAs, which will be submitted to the Indian government within a month, the committee Chairman RV Kanoria said.

This is the first time that an industry body is drawing up guidelines on FTAs against the backdrop of questions being raised regarding a series of FTAs India has signed with a number of countries as well as the one proposed with Asean.

The CII recommendations hints at encouraging multilateral agreements for trade liberalisation under WTO more than bilateral accords.

"Bilateral agreements having divergent standards with different countries may not help India remain competitive in the international market," according to Kanoria.

The CII guidelines will include contentious issues of negative list of goods, common floor tariff and rules of origin.

Pointing out that the CII fully supports trade liberalisation, Kanoria cautioned against unilateral cut in tariffs and duties and said, "Whatever cuts that have to be made need to be multilateral to enforce a level playing field."

Simultaneously, internal reforms like easing of labour laws, agriculture reforms and infrastructure development, as have been done in China, should gain momentum or else the Indian industry will become uncompetitive in the global market, CII expert on WTO and trade agreements TS Vishwanathan said.

Kanoira called for a rethink on cut in peak customs duty until the domestic reforms are completed. "What we want is not undue protection but a level playing field", he added.

The CII will also highlight issues like absence of uniform taxation in the country even though India is set to move towards a common General Sales Tax by 2010 and the problem of inverted duty structure, which plagues many sectors.

Meanwhile, the Indo-Asean FTA has run into rough weather with differences on between the two sides on issues of the number of goods on negative list, duty cuts and inclusion of services and investment, official sources here said.

India has made it clear that it will not further prune the list of goods on negative list--which are not covered under the FTA--below 800 items to oblige Asean and rejected free import of palm oil, which is a major exportable of Malaysia and Indonesia.