US agency to probe India’s trade, investment and industrial policies
31 Aug 2013
Acting on a complaint by US lawmakers, a US government agency has taken up investigations into a wide range of Indian policies that allegedly discriminated against US trade and investment.
The US International Trade Commission (USITC) announced yesterday, it would report on recent policies and measures in India that affected US exports and investment and evaluate the effects of such barriers on US firms and the US economy, PTI reported.
The investigation on "Trade, Investment, and Industrial Policies in India: Effects on the US Economy," it said was jointly requested by the Senate Committee on Finance and the House Committee on Ways and Means.
The USITC described itself as "an independent, nonpartisan, factfinding federal agency", which would provide several case studies of US firms or industries that had been particularly affected by restrictions in India.
According to the USITC it would, enumerate restrictive trade and investment policies that India maintained or had recently adopted, determine which sectors of the US economy were most affected by these policies, and describe the competitiveness of Indian firms in these sectors.
A quantitative analysis of the effects of such measures would also be performed by the agency as also a sample survey of US firms, "to measure perceptions of India's policies and the impact of those policies on firms' strategies toward India."
It added, the survey results would complement the quantitative analysis of the effects of these policies on trade, investment, and the US economy. The USITC had plans for holding a public hearing in connection with the investigation on 13 February and said it would deliver the report to the Congressional committees by 30 November, 2014.
