India, China to establish high-level dialogue mechanism to boost trade ties

During the recently held informal summit between India and China in the southern coastal town of Mamallapuram, the two neighbours decided to establish a high-level economic and trade dialogue mechanism to strengthen bilateral trade and investment cooperation, said Chinese envoy to India.

Speaking exclusively to ANI on Friday, Chinese ambassador to India, Sun Weidong said, "The two sides had touched upon the issue of the trade imbalance between each other. Both India and China had then agreed that the simultaneous development of their economies has brought good opportunities to each other."

"To further deepen economic cooperation, the two sides decided to establish a high-level economic and trade dialogue mechanism to strengthen bilateral trade and investment cooperation and better promote the balanced development of bilateral economic and trade cooperation," the envoy added.

During the informal meeting, Sun said, Prime Minister Modi had thanked Chinese President Xi for increasing imports of rice, sugar and other products from India, and welcomed more Chinese enterprises to invest in manufacturing and other industries here.

"Beijing welcomes Indian companies to invest in IT and pharmaceutical industries in China. The two sides also pledged to encourage mutual investment in potential areas by exploring the establishment of a 'manufacturing partnership'," he added.

The two sides also agreed to work together to conclude negotiations on a mutually beneficial and balanced Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) as soon as possible, he stated.

On the eve of the informal meeting, the signing ceremony of China-India trade projects was jointly hosted by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce and the Indian Ministry of Commerce and Industry in New Delhi.

Companies from the two countries signed 128 trade agreements worth over USD 3 billion, involving minerals, chemicals, agricultural products, pharmaceuticals and other products on which India enjoy competitive advantages.

"China is ready to work with India for economic and trade cooperation with higher quality and at a higher level," the envoy stated.

Earlier during the first day of the summit, Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale had also said that both Xi and Modi had discussed each other's developmental priorities.

"In particular, there was some discussion on trade-related issues, on economic issues, on trying to identify areas of investment that the two countries could encourage and how to enhance trade volume and trade value. This obviously included the issue of trade deficit that exits and the unbalanced trade that exists", Gokhale had said.