The trade agreement, initially scheduled to have been in place in 2007, has been delayed due to differences over the list of items for which India has refused to cut import duties. India’s initial list had 1,400 items.

‘We have offered to cut down the negative list to 490 from 560as a part of a new package. This is the maximum we could have done and we hope that a breakthrough would be achieved before the prime minister goes for the Asean summit,’ PTI news agency quoted an official source as saying.

India’s latest offer to prune the negative list is part of a larger package that offers to reduce duties from 80 per cent to 60 per cent on refined palm oil by 2022, and from 70 per cent to 50 per cent on crude palm oil.

Major exports to India by some important ASEAN members, such as Malaysia and Indonesia, include palm oil, pepper and black tea.

Details of the items dropped from the list was not revealed.