New Delhi, March 28: Singapore Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong will visit India from April 7-9. He and Prime Minister AB Vajpayee will launch negotiations for a comprehensive economic cooperation agreement (CECA) encompassing a free trade agreement (Singapore’s first with a developing country), an investment guarantee agreement, and improvements to the double taxation avoidance scheme (to take it as close as possible to India’s existing pact with Mauritius). Negotiations will cover the exact nature of lower/no tariffs between the two countries. They follow a joint study group (JSG) exercise authored by a joint team co-chaired by deputy governor Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Rakesh Mohan and Singapore’s former envoy to Japan Lim Chin Beng. Sources said Mr Goh and his foreign minister S Jayakumar and trade and industry minister George Yeo will be accompanied by businessmen from third- country companies located in Singapore. This is part of a ‘bridge Singapore’ idea. This aims to use Singapore as the facilitator to attract ASEAN businessmen to India, and, once India agrees, to help Indian business, say, in the service sector, use Singapore as a hub to do business with China. Recently, Brig Yeo invited India to use Singapore “as an economic extension of India.” Once an FTA is in place, Singapore sees cheaper input costs as a magnet for its knowledge-based companies to relocate to India. Though China and Singapore don’t have an FTA, extensive relocation of Singapore’s industry is already going on to China. In this context, Mr Goh has likened the ASEAN as the hull of a jumbo with China, Japan and Korea as one wing. “You can’t fly on one wing,” Mr Goh has said, noting that India could be the second wing. Favouring CECA negotiations is the fact that Singapore has no significant agriculture sector. Also, back door entry of Chinese products through Singapore is not that much of a concern because the island nation has the experience of an existing FTA with Japan (another one with the US has been inked, but hasn’t yet been implemented) and a reputation for strict rules of origin.