By Ranjana Narayan New Delhi, March 21 : Some issues related to agricultural products from Australia remain to be sorted out, which has led to delay in announcing an early harvest deal on the India-Australia FTA. An announcement on the mini deal is likely by the month-end, a source told . Both sides had been working to announce the early harvest deal during the virtual summit between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Australian PM Scott Morrison today. However, the two sides have still to come to an agreement on the final list of products to be included, the source in the know of the deliberations told . “The announcement on the early harvest deal was held back because some of the list of products is being debated. It had been finalized and was earlier to be announced, between March 11 and 13, but it got delayed,” the source said. The full FTA, called the Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA), will include the full list of products. The early harvest deal was to include a small list of the products. An early harvest deal is one in which both parties ink on a set of relatively easily achievable targets, relating to tariff reduction and market access on select items. India has been very clear that it will not include dairy items in the list, and has agreed to include some Australian wines and spirits, as well as some agricultural products. It is understood that some of the agricultural products that Australia wants to export to India are yet to be finalised for inclusion in the early harvest deal, the source said. “The two sides did not want to delay the bilateral summit meeting, as they had a lot of other announcements to make. They are still hopeful that by the end of the month they will be able to announce an early harvest deal, and how it will move forward,” the source added. Discussions on market access for Australian dairy products and meat have been major sticking points in the deal. Australia has been the premier source of foreign wine for India. Imports of wine from Australia stand at $8 million, up from $5 million in the previous year, which works out to 40 percent of the total $20.3 million worth of wine imported by India. Referring to the interim deal, PM Scott Morrison said today: “We’ll redouble our efforts, as I said, on our interim Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement to unlock new opport ties and benefits for both our economies. It will bring us closer to a full agreement as soon as I hope we can achieve that.” PM Modi, in his remarks said: “We have made significant progress in our Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement, CECA, in a very short time, and we have made great progress and I am very sure that we will reach an agreement very soon on the remaining issues, as well. The quick conclusion of CECA will definitely give a boost to our economic revival and economic security.” Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla said that both sides are keen to finalize the agreement and both Prime Ministers “reviewed the situation and it was agreed that we would try and finalize this agreement at the earliest possible opport ty”. “We hope to sort out the remaining issues and come up with something that would be seen as an outcome on this area,” he added. The Indian dairy industry supports around 70 million rural households, which consist of mostly small and marginal farmers. The milk cooperatives, dairy farmers, and trade ons have opposed Free Trade Agreements with milk surplus economies such as Australia and New Zealand, as lowering of tariffs would lead to dumping of cheap imported products that would lead to disruption of the domestic dairy industry. RN