Chinese Vice Premier hails growing trade ties with India

Hailing the rapidly growing Sino-Indian trade ties, visiting Chinese Vice Premier Hui Liangyu has urged New Delhi to further expand economic relations between the two countries.

Xinhua quoted Hui as saying that Sino-Indian bilateral trade rose from 2.9 billion U.S. dollars to 51.8 billion U.S. dollars from 2000 to 2008, making China India’s second largest trade partner and India China’s biggest trade partner in South Asia.

Addressing Indian businessmen and Chinese entrepreneurs based in New Delhi, Hui said that China has built infrastructure projects in India worth 11.1 billion dollars in the past few years and invested 260 million dollars in the fields of telecom, software and pharmaceutical industry. India has made 300 million dollars of investment in China, he added.

Hui promised that China would provide more export and investing opportunities to Indian enterprises, so that bilateral trade can develop in a more balanced way. “China is working on expanding domestic consumption, this will also provide a lot of business opportunities for Indian and other foreign enterprises in China… Such cooperation will benefit not only the two countries, but also the whole world,” he said. Hui also proposed that China and India increase strategic trust to push forward cooperation of bilateral benefit.

“The economies of China and India are mutually supplementary to a great extent. The two countries can take advantage of each other ’s technological strong points in IT, manufacturing, agriculture, infrastructure, energy saving and environment protection,” he said. He indicated that China and India can work together to safeguard common interests, such as: international financial crisis, reform of global economic management structure, pushing forward WTO Doha Round talks and coping with global warming.

India and China are seeking to enhance bilateral ties by expanding collaboration in areas of forests, environment, biotechnology and agriculture.

A high-level delegation from China, led by the Vice Premier, Hui Liangyu, which is currently in New Delhi met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, on Saturday. “The discussions’ focus was on issues such as cooperation in forestry sector, agriculture, role of biotechnology and environment,” said Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh, the official interlocutor. However, no formal agreements were expected to be signed between the leaders of both nations.

China has announced that it would bring 40 million hectares under forest cover in the next 10 years. “We would like to learn from them,” Ramesh said adding India added 4 million hectares of forest cover in the past decade.

In agriculture, the discussions covered the role of biotechnology, where China has made rapid strides in the areas of Bt Cotton. Like India, China is also in the process of developing genetically modified rice. “We would like to share our experiences on the scientific challenges and the regulatory system being put in place,” Ramesh said.

Earlier, in order to take forward their bilateral cooperation in tackling issues of climate change, India and China Friday held talks to chart out their future course of action. Jairam Ramesh and Hui Liangyu discussed steps to be taken by both countries in the field. As part of the cooperation, Ramesh will be visiting China April 10-11 and May 7-9 to attend meetings related to climate change. China and India are part of the BASIC countries, an influential group of four countries which emerged during the climate change talks in Copenhagen. Brazil and South Africa are the other members of the group.

- Asian Treibune -