India seals pact with 4-nation Europe trade group: $100 bn & 10 lakh jobs in 15-yr deal

India and the four-nation European Free Trade Association (EFTA), an intergovernmental grouping of Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland, signed a trade pact Sunday that will see the EFTA countries committing to invest $100 billion in India and aiming to generate 10 lakh jobs over a 15-year period in exchange for tariff concessions for their pharma, chemical products and minerals, among other items. The India-EFTA deal has gone through a decade after negotiations were abandoned in 2013 due to differences between the two partners after as many as 13 rounds of talks. However, major geo-political shifts and a common goal to…