Rethinking Liberalisation of Banking Services under the India-EU Free Trade Agreement

This paper first looks at the performance of EU banks in India, especially as compared to the developmental needs of the un-banked and underbanked regions and groups of people in India. This first part of the paper is based on research by K. Singh, India-EU free trade agreement – Should India open up banking sector? (Madhyam, 2009). Since the financial and economic crisis has highlighted the fact that liberalised and deregulated financial services have damaging effects on a country, this also papers analyses how free trade agreements potentially reinforce rather than mitigate those trends.