China promises to address trade deficit concerns: India

NEW DELHI: Amid heightened tensions of a trade war between the US and China, China on Monday promised India to address the high trade imbalance between the two countries. “Chinese Minister Zhong Shan welcomed Indian investment in China and promised to address the trade deficit between the two countries,” commerce and industry ministry said in a statement on Monday.

Shan, who is China’s minister of commerce, co-chaired the 11th meeting of India-China Joint Group on Economic Relations, Trade, Science and Technology here with commerce and industry minister Suresh Prabhu. Shan’s statement comes in the wake of the US raising tariffs on steel and aluminium imports, a move that impacts India and China and following it up with by announcing to impose new tariffs on $60 billion worth of Chinese technology and consumer goods.

India had a $51.1-billion trade deficit with China in 2016-17.


In the April-January period of 2017-18, India’s exports to China were $10.3 billion against imports of $63.2 billion leaving a trade gap of $52.9 billion.

EU TRADE & INVESTMENT AGREEMENT
Prabhu on Monday said India and the European Union have started working on the free trade agreement again. The two are slated to discuss next month the likelihood of resuming the much delayed Bilateral Trade and Investment Agreement (BTIA) whose negotiations have been stalled for five years.

Chief negotiators of the two sides will meet in April to explore the possibility and discuss likely resumption of India-EU BTIA negotiations which hit a roadblock on contentious issues of slashing of import duty on European cars and alcohol (wines and spirits) by India and recognition of the country as a 'data-secure’ nation to enable free flow of data between India and EU. India’s exports to EU in April-December were $38 billion compared with $47.3 billion in 2016-17. In the same period, India’s imports from EU were $35.2 billion and $42.3 billion, respectively.