Israeli Negotiators Fly to Delhi to Chase a Free Trade Deal

An Israeli delegation was due to leave for New Delhi to begin the first round of practical negotiations on a free trade agreement with India, Israel's Ministry of Economy and Industry announced on Wednesday 18 February 2026. The talks follow a framework agreement signed the previous November by Israel's Minister of Economy and Industry, Nir Barkat, and India's Commerce and Industry Minister, Piyush Goyal, which formally opened the negotiating process.

The delegation is led by the ministry's Foreign Trade Administration and includes specialists in customs, regulation, services, intellectual property and government procurement, the ministry said. Its remit is to work with Indian counterparts towards a comprehensive agreement removing trade barriers. “The trade agreements with India are the next big thing for the Israeli economy,” Barkat said, calling the trip “a strategic step that will inject billions into the economy”. Roy Fisher, who heads the Foreign Trade Administration, said the team was travelling “with a structured work plan and a clear goal: to create a modern, balanced, and broad-ranging agreement”.

Fifteen years of stop-start talks

Israel and India have been circling a trade deal for a decade and a half. The Jerusalem Post reported that Barkat and Goyal signed their memorandum of understanding on 21 November 2025, with a delegation of more than 100 Indian representatives in attendance, and that the two sides had been working towards an agreement for fifteen years. The Post recorded the same trade figure the ministry cited: Israeli exports of goods and services to India of roughly $3.1 billion in 2024, up 56 per cent over four years.

The round the delegation flew out for went ahead. India's state broadcaster, All India Radio News, reported that the first round concluded in New Delhi on 26 February 2026 after four days, covering trade in goods and services, rules of origin, technical barriers to trade, customs procedures, intellectual property rights and digital trade, with the next in-person round set for Israel in May 2026.

The tariff wall Israeli exporters run into

Israeli officials describe Indian tariffs on technology products, chemicals, medical devices and advanced agricultural goods as among the highest in the world. Tariff schedules of this kind are catalogued in World Tariff Profiles, published jointly by the World Trade Organization, the International Trade Centre and UN Trade and Development, which sets out bound and applied tariffs for more than 170 economies. India runs a high applied-tariff regime by the standards of large economies, which is why market access rather than diplomacy is the substance of these negotiations.

What India already buys from Israel

One category of Israeli export to India needs no trade agreement at all. India is by a wide margin the largest customer for Israeli weapons: the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute found India took 56 per cent of Israeli arms exports in 2021–25, ahead of Germany at 21 per cent and the United States at 7.8 per cent, The Times of Israel reported in March 2026. SIPRI's own fact sheet for 2021–25 sets that against a market in which the United States alone supplied 42 per cent of major arms exports. A free trade agreement would matter mainly for the civilian half of the relationship: chemicals, medical devices, water technology and software.

Where Europe still sits

For all the attention on Asia, Israel's dominant goods partner remains the European Union, which accounted for 31.7 per cent of Israel's total trade in goods with the world in 2025, worth €43.3 billion, according to the European Commission. Israeli exports to India, at roughly $3.1 billion in 2024, are a fraction of that, which is the case Barkat is making for the deal, and also the measure of how far it would have to go.

What the announcement did not settle

The ministry gave no timetable for concluding an agreement, no list of the sectors Israel is prepared to open in return, and no indication of which Indian tariff lines it is targeting first. The statement describes India as the world's fifth-largest economy but does not source that ranking. The announcement also linked the trip to an imminent visit to Israel by the Indian prime minister without giving dates beyond "Sunday".