labels: Economy - general
India commits to strengthen trade and investment links with trading partners: Kamam Nath news
22 April 2008

India is willing to strengthen trade and investment linkages with its trading partners through its knowledge advantage, its pool of skilled resources, its young population, its potential of being a manufacturing hub and a base for high-end R&D.

Addressing general debate of the UNCTAD XII ministerial conference at Accra (Ghana), union minister of commerce and industry Kamal Nath said India's regional and inter-regional trading agreements, partnerships and economic ties with other countries of the South 1form an important element in India's development diplomacy.

''To further promote the South-South trade, we are committed to work towards exploring the full potential of the GSTP. We are looking forward for a successful conclusion of the third round of negotiations which takes into account the views of all its members'', Nath said.

The Indian team attending the conference included  commerce secretary G.K. Pillai; senior officials from the ministry of commerce and industry, external affairs and ambassadors and permanent representative to World Trade Organisation. 

Nath said that India is fully supportive of focusing on Africa which provides all of us with an opportunity to highlight our contributions to the development of the continent and our partnership with Africa for mutual benefit. ''We would be willing to work on developing present as well as future corpus of projects/activities with Africa, not only with individual countries, also with regional African Organisations as well'', he stressed.

The minister stated that India and Africa were building a genuine partnership based on the principles of mutual benefit, mutual respect and equality.   While highlighting the market access initiatives, Nath stated, ''We recognize that for the LDCs, especially those in the Africa region need market access for ensuring the development dimensions of international trade. It is in this regard that only a few days ago, in the India-Africa Summit in New Delhi, which most of the dignitaries present here attended, we announced our decision to implement a Duty Free Tariff Preference Scheme for all the LDCs on a non-reciprocal basis. On 85 per cent of the total items, we will be bringing our duties to zero in a time frame of five years and on additional 9 per cent items there will be fixed tariff preferences."

The minister also said that this scheme would be implemented from 1 May 2008 and added, "we are sure that the African LDCs would reap the benefit of this scheme to their advantage''.  

On multilateral trade Nath said, ''The Doha Development Agenda is one of the most ambitious attempts at ensuring that the issue of development is firmly at the core of the multilateral trading system. The fundamental principles of the multilateral trading system, namely, non-discrimination, predictability, stability and transparency are fully supportive of development. Since development issues lie at the heart of the current Round of Negotiations, the key to the Negotiations, therefore, should be, firstly, to ensure that this Round delivers for development and secondly, helps developing countries to integrate into the world trading system and take advantage of opportunities since many developing countries also need assistance in building up their capacity to make use of multilateral trade liberalization.

"Given the present interface that exists between national development strategies and international process and disciplines, we firmly believe that there is a need for creating an international enabling environment that is conducive to the growth of developing countries in a manner that best suits their circumstances and national priorities. Therefore, within the framework of international disciplines, each country must have the policy space to choose what is most appropriate for its circumstances and for the overall welfare of its people''.  

Earlier, Nath had also had various bilateral meetings with the Trade Ministers of UK, China, Pakistan, Argentina, Sweden, Senegal, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Brazil, Thailand and Mali and discussed various matters including the bilateral relations and economic cooperation. During the course of the discussions, he informed the Ministers that FDI policies in India have been further liberalised and many new sectors have been opened recently and added that infrastructure sector in India is an opportunity for investment.   


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India commits to strengthen trade and investment links with trading partners: Kamam Nath