'Govt, industry need to make concerted efforts for reducing dependence on China'

Chadha was speaking at a webinar organised by Assocham on 'Gaining market autonomy - an era of reduced dependence on China' on Tuesday "The government and industry both need to make concerted efforts towards reducing dependence on China," he said He further said global confidence in trade integration started dwindling almost 18 months before the COVID-19 pandemic started.

Both the government and industry need to make concerted efforts towards reducing dependence on China, a senior official said. Over-dependence on a single source is not good for any country, but it is also not easy to decouple integrated global value chains, Sanjay Chadha, additional secretary in the commerce ministry, was quoted as saying in a statement by Assocham.  Chadha was speaking at a webinar organised by Assocham on 'Gaining market autonomy - an era of reduced dependence on China' on Tuesday

"The government and industry both need to make concerted efforts towards reducing dependence on China," he said

He further said global confidence in trade integration started dwindling almost 18 months before the COVID-19 pandemic started.  "We did an analysis of all HS Codes at 8-digit level where US imports from China declined because of the tariffs and vice versa. We had gained to some extent both in the US and China markets, but we were woefully short of the market space that had been vacated," he said.  In trade parlance, every product is categorised under an HSN (Harmonised System of Nomenclature) code. It helps in systematic classification of goods across the globe. "We need to scale up and have a more exportable surplus and the sentiment should not be to abandon China, but to look at China plus many others for global supply chains," he added.