Wednesday, June 14, 2017 11:15 am

INDIA (From news reports) -- DuPont Co. and the Dow Chemical Co. have cleared a major hurdle to their tie-up with conditional approval from the Competition Commission of India for their $78.5 billion merger. There are only two major countries left to approve the deal -- Canada and the U.S.

DuPont confirmed on June 12 that it has received conditional clearance from the Indian antitrust watchdog. India is one of a few big jurisdictions that had yet to clear the deal, and it is an important market for both companies. The companies said in a statement that they remain on track to close the merger in August, the contractual deadline for the deal.

The companies said in an email to Bloomberg BNA that they agreed to "remedies" in Indian markets related to grape fungicides targeting the sac funghi Ascomycota and those handling of "low graft" maleic-anhydride (MAH) grafted polymers, a type of plastic.

The companies "continue to engage constructively with regulators in the remaining jurisdictions," Dow media relations leader Jarrod Erpelding said in an email.

The U.S. and Canada stand out as two jurisdictions that have not yet cleared the deal, but it has garnered many of the clearances necessary to proceed with the first stage of the planned merger and spin-off into three separate industry-based companies.

Because the process in the U.S. and Canada is confidential, information on where the companies stand in those merger reviews is unavailable. Canada's antitrust agency publicly announces its merger decisions on a monthly basis only, but a spokeswoman confirmed June 9 that the bureau is still reviewing the merger.

The deal has already cleared several other barriers. China and Brazil approved the merger conditioned on divestitures in May, and the European Commission cleared it with substantial divestiture requirements in March, including the sale of major parts of Dupont's global pesticide business.

Shareholder votes on the deal, announced in December 2015, passed in June 2016.