NEW DELHI:Taking another step closer, India and China on Tuesday agreed to draw up a roadmap with clear timelines to boost bilateral trade. Coming just a day after China promised to address India’s trade deficit concerns, the move is being seen as an indication that both countries are exploring tighter relations to offset the United States’ protectionist stance.
The agreements come after a meeting between visiting Chinese commerce minister Zhong Shan and his Indian counterpart Suresh Prabhu in New Delhi on Monday, with both ministers raising issues relating to more trade and addressing trade imbalances.
On Tuesday, the Commerce ministry stated that the two sides have reaffirmed proposals to fast-track trade between the two nations, that have a disproportionately small volume of trade in comparison to their global GDP shares. India and China account for 35 per cent of the world’s population and about 20 per cent of the world’s GDP, but bilateral trade between the two is less than 1 per cent of global trade.
“The two ministers, while reaffirming and reiterating their commitments to promote a balanced and sustainable bilateral trade, agreed to continue to take forward the initiatives identified in the ‘Five Year Development Programme for Economic and Trade Cooperation’,” the ministry said.
Apart from China’s promise to address India’s trade deficit with it through the broad framework provided by successive joint economic group meetings, the two sides also reaffirmed “their aim to promote bilateral trade in the field of pharmaceuticals including resolution of issues of Indian pharma products exports to Chinese markets”.
Prabhu and Shan also agreed to re-negotiate bilateral investment agreement to create a more stable, transparent and predictable legal environment to facilitate greater investment on both sides.
India’s trade deficit with China stood at $36.73 billion during the April-October period of the current fiscal. The deficit had marginally dipped to $51 billion in 2016-17 from $52.69 billion in the previous fiscal.