China agrees to improve market access for Indian farm goods
27 Mar 2018
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China has reaffirmed its commitment to accelerate the provision of market access for Indian agricultural products, including non-basmati rice, rape-seed meals, soya-meals, pomegranate and pomegranate arils, okra, banana and other fruits and vegetables and bovine meat expeditiously as the two countries agreed on a roadmap for addressing the huge imbalance in their bilateral trade.
The decision was made following a breakfast meeting between minister of commerce and industry and civil aviation Suresh Prabhu and his Chinese counterpart Zhong Shan, in New Delhi today.
The eleventh session of the China-India joint-group on Economic Relations, Trade, Science and Technology, which was co-chaired by Prabhu and Zhong Shan was held on Monday.
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 between the People’s Republic of China and India signed in September 2014.
The Chinese team noted India’s concern regarding the long-existing trade imbalance and requests for market access of Indian products and services and expressed its commitment to address these concerns through the broad framework provided by successive JEGs and the Five Year Development Programme for Economic and Trade Cooperation between the two countries.
The Chinese side reaffirmed its commitment to accelerating the provision of market access for Indian agricultural products pertaining to non-basmati rice, rape-seed meals, soya-meals, pomegranate and pomegranate arils, okra, banana and other fruits and vegetables and bovine meat expeditiously.
The two sides reaffirmed their aim to promote bilateral trade in the field of pharmaceuticals, including resolution of issues of Indian pharma products exports to Chinese markets.
The ministers agreed to draw up a medium and long term roadmap with action points and timelines for increasing bilateral trade between the two countries in a balanced and sustainable manner.
The two Asian neighbours are the largest emerging economies of the world with 35 per cent of the world’s population and around 20 pr cent of the world’s GDP but the relative volume of bilateral trade is less than 1 per cent of global trade.
The two sides agreed to strengthen cooperation within WTO, and other multilateral and regional frameworks, to maintain their common interest. Both the sides reiterated their commitment to rules based multilateral global trade.
