THE Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) has been billed as the "mother of all trade agreements", but one major stumbling block is whether one of its most important members - India - will eventually make it to the finish line.

Negotiations for the 16-member free trade pact - poised to be the world's biggest regional trade agreement - have been taking place for more than six years, and are said to be approaching the final stretch. But earlier this week, India - the world's seventh-largest economy - said that it still has reservations on joining the pact due to several concerns, including its ballooning trade deficit with China that has now grown to nearly US$58 billion.

The RCEP negotiations involve all 10 Asean member states (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam) and the Asean bloc's six free trade agreement (FTA) partners - Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand - with the aim of creating a wide-ranging FTA that covers a third of the global economy.