Bali, Oct 07: Declaring that India was working on eliminating trade and investment barriers, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee today advocated a trade turnover of USD 30 billion with Asean by year 2007 and establishment of a free trade area with the ten-member regional grouping within a decade. Seeking to partner Asean in the era of globalisation, he listed six strong points of the Indian economy, including a rich pool of English-speaking human resource and the information technology revolution for enhancing India-Asean trade and investment. “India is conscious of the new Asean members. We are offering unilateral tariff concessions on items of export interest to Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam (lesser developed and newer entrants to Asean.) “We are also seeking to incorporate an early harvest scheme to provide the incentive for a long-term engagement. If we proceed along this course, we can target a trade turnover of USD 30 billion by 2007 and a free trade area within 10 years," Vajpayee told the Asean Business and Investment Summit here. Observing that India`s trade and economic interaction with the Asean countries has been growing steadily, but not fast enough, Vajpayee said trade of less than USD 10 billion between the two did not do justice to the combined population of 1.5 billion people, producing a USD trillion-and-a-half worth of goods and services annually.
Recalling his speech at the first India-Asean business summit a year ago for boosting business, Vajpayee said “our trade has since grown by about 25 per cent, but my comments remain valid."
The business summit was also addressed by Chinese and Japanese Prime Ministers Wen Jiabao and Junichiro Koizumi and South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun.
Bureau Report