Indian, Chinese officials hold talks to address trade deficit

Top Indian and Chinese commerce officials held talks to take steps to reduce India's ballooning trade deficit with China and discuss follow up actions needed to broaden market access for Indian products here.
Commerce Secretary S R Rao along with Additional Secretaries Rajiv Kher and J S Deepak, who arrived here on May 27 on a five-day visit, discussed bilateral trade issues with their Chinese counterparts in the last two days, officials here told PTI.
Rao and his colleagues held talks with three top officials in the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, National Development and Reforms Commission (NDRC), the planning body of China and Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

They met Chen Jian, Chinese Vice Minister of Commerce and Yan Xueshan, Vice Chairman of NDRC and Vice Minister of MIIT.
The talks are ongoing, the sources said.
The talks so far went off well and were reportedly focussed on streamlining procedures for Indian exports, they said.

India also looks to facilitate Chinese offer to invest in industrial zones to step up its investments.
Issues relating to declining bilateral trade, which fell to about USD 66.7 billion last year from around USD 74 billion in 2012, China's plans to step up investments in India as well as the ballooning trade deficit which touched about USD 30 billion last year figured in the talks, officials said.

The two countries set the target of USD 100 billion in bilateral trade by 2015 during Chinese Premier Li Keqiang's visit.
During his recent visit, Li had promised to address New Delhi's concerns in this regard and seriously consider ways to meet India's demand to open up IT and pharmaceutical sectors which offered great potential for Indian products.
Li's promise to open up the sectors and the MOUs signed during his visit were expected to facilitate India's exports of oilmeal, pharmaceuticals, marine products and buffalo meat.
Indian officials expect the buffalo meat exports to fetch about one USD billion dollars in the first year itself.