Which among the following countries with which India does not have Free Trade Agreement (FTA) ?

The correct answer is B, European Free Trade Association. TEPA was signed on 10 March 2024 in New Delhi with the four EFTA states, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland, and came into force on 1 October 2025. Option A is wrong because the European Union is a separate bloc of which none of the EFTA four is a member; India's negotiations with the European Union are a different track altogether and this is the commonest trap in the question. Option C is wrong because India has no bloc-level agreement with the Gulf Cooperation Council; its Gulf deal is a bilateral Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement with the United Arab Emirates alone. Option D is wrong because the agreement with ASEAN is the India-ASEAN Trade in Goods Agreement, which came into force in 2010, well before TEPA was even negotiated.

The correct answer is C, Denmark. The European Free Trade Association has exactly four members today: Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. Denmark was among the seven countries that set up EFTA in 1960, but it left to join the European Communities and is today a member of the European Union, not of EFTA. Option A is wrong because Norway is an EFTA member and has chosen to stay outside the European Union. Option B is wrong because Switzerland is an EFTA member and is India's largest trading partner among the four, which is why gold was kept out of the TEPA duty cuts. Option D is wrong because Iceland is an EFTA member; the fourth member, Liechtenstein, is the smallest of them and is often left out of the options to test recall.

The correct answer is D, Mauritius. The India-Mauritius Comprehensive Economic Cooperation and Partnership Agreement, or CECPA, took effect in 2021 and is the first trade agreement India concluded with any African country. It covers goods, services and economic cooperation. Option A is wrong because India has no free trade agreement with South Africa; the two are linked only through the limited India-Southern African Customs Union talks, which have not produced an agreement, and through groupings such as BRICS, which are not trade agreements. Option B is wrong because India has no free trade agreement with Egypt, although the two countries have long-standing trade ties. Option C is wrong because India has no bilateral trade agreement with Kenya either, so Mauritius remains the answer for the African first.

The correct answer is C, 2022. The India-UAE Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement was signed on 18 February 2022 and came into force on 1 May 2022, a gap of barely ten weeks that makes it one of the fastest agreements India has brought into operation. Option A is wrong because 2019 is the year India announced at Bangkok that it would not join the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, a different event altogether. Option B is wrong because no major Indian trade agreement entered into force in 2020; negotiations with the United Arab Emirates had not even formally begun by then. Option D is wrong because 2024 is the year the Trade and Economic Partnership Agreement with the EFTA states was signed, on 10 March, and that agreement entered into force only on 1 October 2025.

The correct answer is B, 2019, Bangkok. At the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership summit held in Bangkok in November 2019, India announced that it would not join the agreement. Its objections were a likely surge of cheap Chinese imports, the use of 2014 as the base year for tariff reduction, the absence of a workable safeguard against import surges and the failure to open services and professional mobility. Option A is wrong because the 2017 Manila summit was a stage of the negotiations, not the point of withdrawal. Option C is wrong because the remaining fifteen countries signed RCEP in 2020 at a virtual summit chaired by Vietnam, after India had already stayed out. Option D is wrong because no RCEP decision of India was taken at Jakarta in 2021.