India hopes China will help tackle swelling trade deficit
NEWDELHI: India is hopeful China will facilitate greater market access for its goods and services to tackle a swelling trade deficit, external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj said on Friday as she and her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi launched a new mechanism to boost cultural exchanges.
Speaking after the first meeting of the high-level mechanism on cultural and people-to-people exchanges, Swaraj said the armed forces of the two sides were working on confidencebuilding measures to promote peace along the border.
Wang, who referred to India as China’s “most important neighbour” in his speech, said bilateral ties had “entered a new historical stage”. He said he and Swaraj had reviewed progress in various fields and looked at the possibility of future cooperation.
“Our bilateral economic relations have progressed well while our bilateral trade figures continue to rise. We also need to find a solution to the continuously increasing trade deficit,” Swaraj said, adding India is grateful for “concrete steps” taken by China recently to address this matter.
India has taken up the issue of greater market access, especially for agricultural products, pharmaceuticals and IT services, with China several times in the recent past, including during commerce secretary Anup Wadhawan’s visit to the neighbouring country in November.
Bilateral trade rose by 18.63% year-on-year in 2017 and touched $89.71 billion in 2017-18. However, trade deficit increased to $63.12 billion in 2017-18 from $51.11 billion in the previous fiscal.
Swaraj said the armies of the two countries were “making efforts to strengthen contacts and implement various confidence- NEWDELHI: India and China on Friday identified 10 areas, ranging from films and television to yoga, for boosting cooperation under a new high level mechanism for cultural and people-topeople exchanges.
External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj and her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi chaired the first meeting of the mechanism that was mooted at the informal summit between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping at Wuhan in April. The mechanism will club together more than 40 existing programmes for cooperation in culture and people-to-people exchanges and also include some new schemes.
“Today, we identified 10
building measures”. Expressing satisfaction at “good progress” in bilateral ties this year, Swaraj said both sides were preparing an “ambitious agenda” for 2019 and areas of people-to-people cooperation – cultural exchanges, cooperation in films and television, museum management, sports exchanges, youth exchanges, tourism cooperation, exchanges between states and cities, traditional medicine, yoga, and education,” Swaraj said.
Wang said the number of tourists travelling between India and China was small compared to their combined population of 2.7 billion. “We both agree that as China-india cooperation embraces a strong momentum of full growth, peopleto-people exchanges must also step up and this will be helpful to increase our mutual understanding and friendship,” he said.
are confident President Xi Jinping’s visit to India next year for the second informal summit will “add another new facet” to the developmental partnership.