India wants to enhance share and investment in the region
Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal has highlighted that Japan’s procurement from India was limited despite its global imports being high with zero preferential tariffs.
“Japan, it is seen that in many specific products, despite our global exports and Japanese global imports being high with zero preferential tariffs, the procurement from India was limited,” he said at the Australia-India-Japan Trilateral Ministerial Meeting held on 1 September 2020 through videoconference.
This cuts across many sectors such as steel, marine products, processed agriculture, Agro-Chemicals, plastics, carpets, clothing, footwear etc, said Goyal.
He expressed the hope that the proposed initiative following the meeting must clearly try to bridge this and work towards enhancing mutual trade.
Describing Australia, India and Japan as crucial players in the region, Goyal noted that during 2019, the cumulative GDP was US$9.3 trillion while cumulative merchandise goods and services trade were US$2.7 trillion and US$0.9 trillion, respectively.
“With such a strong baseline, it is important that we use this opportunity to work towards enhancing the share of our trade and investment in the region”, the Minister said.
Addressing the Trilateral meeting, Goyal said “India wholeheartedly endorses the broad concept of working towards ensuring a trustworthy, dependable and reliable supply chain in the Indo-Pacific region.
“The diversification of supply chain is critical for managing the risks associated with supply of inputs including disciplining price volatility. We could provide the core pathway for linking value chains in the region by creating a network of reliable long-term supplies and appropriate capacities.”
Elaborating, Goyal said the initiative also dwells on improving the competitiveness of sectors.
“For this, we may need to identify the manufacturing and services sectors that contribute most to the domestic value addition in the region.
“We support the need for specific activities listed for enhancing the resilience of the supply chains which include those related to promotion and facilitating trade and investment as well as diversification of production base.”
He said that the digitization of trade procedures is a very important step for facilitating trade and thereby maintaining resilience in supply chains.
This was clearly exemplified during the COVID crisis when many of the regulatory agencies were not functioning physically.
“It is important that all of us maintain this momentum on facilitation through the adoption of electronic documents, commensurate with our capacities,” stressed Goyal.
In terms of participation by interested countries, Goyal said that it is important that we look at countries with a similar lines of thinking in terms of being reliable and dependable suppliers for ensuring resiliency in the supply chains of the region.
Some of the other key parameters that could be looked at are market-oriented policies, demography, growth potential, fiscal state of play including existing debt burdens and geopolitical strategy.
Meanwhile, the Australian, Indian and Japanese Economic Ministers have reaffirmed their determination to take a lead in delivering a free, fair, inclusive, non-discriminatory, transparent, predictable and stable trade and investment environment and in keeping their markets open.
This assurance came from the Australia-India-Japan Economic Ministers’ Joint Statement on Supply Chains Resilience which was adopted during the Trilateral Ministerial Meeting.
Australia’s Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment, Senator Simon Birmingham, India’s Minister of Commerce and Industry, Piyush Goyal, and Japan’s Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry, Kajiyama Hiroshi held a ministerial videoconference on 1 September 2020.
In light of the COVID-19 crisis and the recent global-scale changes in the economic and technological landscape, the Ministers underscored the necessity and potential to enhance the resiliency of supply chains in the Indo-Pacific region.
Recognizing the pressing need for regional cooperation on supply chain resilience in the Indo- Pacific, the Ministers shared their intention to work toward the launch of a new initiative to achieve the objective through cooperation.
They instructed their officials to promptly work out the details of the new initiative for its launch later this year. The Ministers noted the important role of business and academia in realizing the objective.
The Ministers called for other countries in the region, which share the aforementioned views, to participate in the initiative.” #trade #investments #exports #imports /fiinews.com
