Assocham To Revamp Jbcs

A senior chamber official said Assocham, which has over 50 business councils with countries abroad, is considering pruning down their number as most of the existing JBCs are inactive at the moment.

The slimmer battery of JBCs will be reoriented to focus on particular sectors of the economy, the official said. Until now, the JBCs dealt only with promoting trade with the partner countries.

Quite a few of the JBCs are not necessary. We would like to focus our attention to the countrys major trading partners and concentrate on areas that would provide comparative advantage to the trading partners.

The official said discussions are currently on with Ficci, which is the partner chamber in the various JBCs, to alter re-examine the role of the JBCs.

The decision to reconsider the various business alliances was prompted by the changing foreign trade pattern of the country.

The official said the JBCs with the G7 countries are progressing fine and are quite active but with the majority of the other countries the councils are defunct.

Assocham said it would, while re-examining its strategies for promoting trade with countries abroad, would also forge fresh JBCs with the major emerging trading partners, particularly, from the Asean countries.

Our members will perceive value in these collaborations only if active trade occurs between the countries, the official said.