CDS (II) 2022 General Knowledge · Question 72 of 120

Correct — B, Defence cooperation and intelligence sharing. The Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity was launched at Tokyo on 23 May 2022 with fourteen partners — Australia, Brunei, Fiji, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, the United States and Vietnam — and its work was organised into four pillars: trade, described as the connected economy; supply chains, the resilient economy; clean energy, decarbonisation and infrastructure, the clean economy; and tax and anti-corruption, the fair economy. Three of the four options here name those last three exactly. Defence and intelligence appear nowhere in the framework: IPEF was deliberately built as an economic arrangement, and the security architecture of the region runs through separate groupings altogether. India joined three of the pillars and stayed outside the trade pillar, whose chapters on digital data flows, labour, environment and public procurement it was not willing to negotiate at the time.

• (a)Clean energy, decarbonisation and infrastructure — This is the third pillar word for word — clean energy, decarbonisation and infrastructure, later formalised as the clean economy agreement. India is a participant in it.
• (c)Supply chain — Supply chain is the second pillar, and the one that has moved fastest: its agreement was signed in November 2023 and came into force in February 2024, setting up crisis-response and diversification mechanisms.
• (d)Tax and anti-corruption — Tax and anti-corruption is the fourth pillar, the fair economy, covering exchange of tax information, tax administration and anti-bribery commitments. Its agreement was signed in 2024.

IPEF is not a free trade agreement. It offers no tariff concessions and no market access, which is what distinguishes it from arrangements such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership; instead it sets rules and cooperation mechanisms across four separate pillars, and a participating country may join some pillars and not others. That modular design is what allowed India to sign up to three pillars while remaining outside the fourth.

The safest reading of the options is by category rather than by memory. Three of them are unmistakably economic — energy and infrastructure, supply chains, tax and corruption — and one is a security proposition. A framework with the words Economic Framework for Prosperity in its title is not going to carry a defence pillar, and the region's defence groupings are separately named and separately constituted. Anchor the rest to the exam date: at the time this paper was written in September 2022 the framework was four months old and had produced no agreements at all. Since then the supply chain agreement has entered into force, in February 2024, and the clean economy and fair economy agreements followed in October 2024 — the trade pillar, the one India stayed out of, is the one that has not concluded.

• IPEF was launched at Tokyo on 23 May 2022 with fourteen participating countries.
• Its four pillars are trade, supply chains, clean economy, and fair economy covering tax and anti-corruption.
• It contains no tariff concessions and is not a free trade agreement.
• India joined three pillars and stayed out of the trade pillar.
• The Supply Chain Agreement was signed in November 2023 and entered into force in February 2024; the Clean Economy and Fair Economy Agreements were signed in June 2024 and entered into force in October 2024.

• Assuming any Indo-Pacific grouping must have a security component; IPEF is economic by design.
• Describing IPEF as a free trade agreement; it offers no tariff concessions.
• Forgetting that India is inside three pillars and outside one — a favourite second half of this question.

As a which-is-not-a-pillar item, as a which-pillar-did-India-not-join item, or as a compare-with-RCEP statements item.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  India has stayed out of which one of the following IPEF pillars?

  • (a)Trade
  • (b)Supply chains
  • (c)Clean economy
  • (d)Fair economy

  Answer(a) Trade — India joined the other three but did not sign on to the trade pillar.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following statements about the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity is correct?

  • (a)It is a free trade agreement offering tariff concessions
  • (b)It is a security alliance of Indo-Pacific states
  • (c)It is an economic framework organised into pillars that members may join separately
  • (d)It is a lending arm of the Asian Development Bank

  Answer(c) It is an economic framework organised into pillars that members may join separately — which is why India could join three and skip one.