India China to Achieve Trade of USD 100 Billion by 2015
UNION Minister for Commerce, Industry and Textiles, Anand Sharma expressed confidence that India-China are on course to achieve the bilateral trade target of USD 100 billion by 2015. Trade between India and China has seen exponential growth in the last few years. As per the trade statistics of DGCI&S the total trade volume has gone up from USd 2.3 billion in 2000-01 to USD 59.62 billion in 2010-11 (April-March). The Minister met the Governor of Xinjiang province of China Mr Nur Baki yesterday.
However, the Minister raised the issue of Indian concern for the trade deficit. Trade deficit for the Indian side has increased from USD 9.1 billion in 2006-07 to USD 20.8 billion in 2010-11. A balanced trade is needed for long term, sustainable and harmonious development of economic cooperation between the two countries. Shri Sharma said that the area of drugs and pharmaceuticals is an important segment of our efforts to diversify our bilateral trade basket. Both sides need to work aggressively towards removing administrative bottlenecks and overly restrictive regulatory measures, in order to boost development of all round cooperation in this area. The Indian Minister also highlighted renewable energy where Chinese Government has fixed a target of 100 GW by 2020, as another area with great potential for export from Indian side.