India-China should focus on strengthening trade facilitation: Chinese embassy official

Ms. ZHU Xiaohong, Counselor, Embassy of the People’s Republic of China today said that India-China should continue to strengthen cooperation in trade facilitation, upgrade bilateral, regional and multilateral trade facilitation, and create favorable conditions for expanding bilateral trade scale and alleviating trade imbalances.

Speaking at the ‘India-China Business Meeting & Signing Ceremony’ organized by FICCI, Ms. ZHU Xiaohong highlighted that India’s agriculture products, pharmaceuticals, handicrafts have certain advantages. However, due to the lack of necessary understanding and cognition of the Chinese market, their way into China is not smooth. 

She further suggested that the Indian side should focus more on ‘4Cs’ -- Compatibility, Competitiveness, Creativity, and Cooperation. “Indian companies should make good use of its advantages in the service industry to create manufacturing plus service innovative products,” she added.

Ms. ZHU further added that India is China’s largest trading partner in South Asia and Indian companies are expanding in the Chinese market with a cumulative investment of nearly USD 1 billion. “With a combined market of over 2.7 billion people and GDP of 20% of the world’s total, China and India enjoy huge potential and broad prospects for economic and trade cooperation,” she said.

Highlighting the trade imbalance between the two countries, Ms. ZHU said that China has taken a series of steps to reduce the trade imbalance and made positive progress in promoting the import of agricultural products from India.

Mr. LIU Changyu, Deputy Director-General, Foreign Trade Department of Ministry of Commerce, P.R.China said that mutually beneficial cooperation between the two countries is also deepening. Chinese enterprises have responded positively to the strategy of ‘Make in India’ and ‘Digital India’ and their investment in India has exceeded US$ 8 billion.  

“In the next 15 years, China will import US$ 30 trillion of goods and USD 100 billion of services from the world. As the only two major developing countries with a population of more than 1 billion in the world, China and India are focusing on development,” he said.

Mr. LIU said that the Ministry of Commerce of China is willing to further strengthen cooperation with relevant departments of India to jointly create a better future for economic and trade development.

A total of 129 MoUs were signed between the Indian and Chinese companies during the event in sectors like agri-related products, minerals, textiles, etc. to further strengthen the trade relations between the two countries.

Mr. Vikramjit Singh Sahney, Executive Committee Member, FICCI & Chairman – Sun International & President-International Chamber of Commerce, Paris-India said that India and China have been the strongest economic partners and that India values the contribution of Chinese companies in its economic growth. “Indian industry is upbeat about its relations with China,” added Mr. Sahney.