China reaffirms commitments to open market

China and India have agreed to strengthen cooperation in the World Trade Organization (WTO) as other multi-lateral frameworks as well as open Chinese markets to Indian agri-products.

The agreement and other trade-related reaffirmation came following the 11 session of the China-India joint-group on Economic Relations, Trade, Science & Technology which was held in New Delhi on 26 March 2018.

The meeting was co-chaired by Commerce and Industry as well as Civil Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu and the Chinese Commerce Minister Zhong Shan.

Both the sides reiterated their commitment to rules based multilateral global trade, said a statement from the Public Information Bureau on 27 Mar 2018.

China has reaffirmed their commitment to accelerating the provision of market access for Indian agricultural products and promot bilateral trade in pharmaceuticals.

The agri-products are non-basmati rice, rape-seed meals, soya-meals, pomegranate and pomegranate arils, okra, banana and other fruits and vegetables and bovine meat.

The two sides reaffirmed to resolve issues of Indian pharma products exports to the Chinese markets.

The Ministers agreed to draw-up a medium and long term roadmap with action points and timelines for increasing bilateral trade between the two countries in a balanced and sustainable manner, as the two countries are the largest emerging economies of the world with 35% of the world’s population and around 20% of the world’s GDP but the relative volume of bilateral trade is less than 1% of global trade.

The two Ministers agreed to continue to take forward the initiatives identified in the Five Year Development Programme for Economic and Trade Cooperation between which was signed in September 2014. fii-news.com