MUMBAI, Dec 17: India is making all efforts to get market access for its showpiece IT sector in the Chinese state enterprises, Commerce Secretary Rajeev Kher has said.
“We expect that we will find openings in information technology sector with the state enterprises of China. We are working in this direction,” Kher said on the sidelines of the India Engineering Sourcing Show (IESS) organised by EEPC India here.
While some of the top Indian IT companies have set up their units in China, the market access still remains an issue there.
Kher said that India has impressed upon China that it is competitive in a few areas and “there is no reason why Indian companies should not get market access in those product areas”.
“These sectors largely include pharmaceuticals, information technology services, meat & meat products and textiles,” the Commerce Secretary said on Tuesday.
He pointed out that there has been a fairly good appreciation of India’s point of concerns on the Chinese side.
“We are now taking up each of these sectors to see how we can remove barriers in the Chinese market, either the regulatory processes or simply through commercial processes and we are working very hard towards that,” Kher said.
Asked about the trade imbalance with China, Kher said: “There has been this concern about bilateral trade between India and China for some years now.
“The issue is being addressed in two ways: one, by impressing upon China in the process of bilateral institutional mechanism that it is important for the sustainability of bilateral trade that there is some balance, and by impressing that through the institutional mechanisms”.
The bilateral trade between the two countries stood at USD 68.9 billion in 2013-14. The trade deficit against India during the period was about USD 35 billion.
The share of China in India’s total trade increased from 2.5 per cent in 2000-01 to 8.6 per cent in 2013-14 and India’s share in China’s total trade increased from 0.7 per cent in 2001 to a mere 1.6 per cent in 2013. (PTI)
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