The Indian Chamber and Commerce (ICC) has assured to take initiative for promotion of trade between China and North East India while proposing a slew of definitive measures on setting up of a long term cooperative mechanism taken by China-South Asia Business Forum.
ICC officials said China had emerged as India's largest trade partner overtaking the US, with a ten-fold increase in trade since 2002 to USD 52 billion. With the strong growth in Indian domestic consumption, India would become an even more important trade partner for China in the coming period.
They said India's core competencies in IT, health care and technology, and China's strengths in projects, infrastructure and manufacturing, could serve to complement each other in increasing cooperation between the two countries.
ICC representatives had attended the 4th China-South Asia Business Forum at Kunming City, China, co-organised by China Council for promotion of International Trade (CCPIT), SAARC Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Yunnan Provincial Government and advocated for promotion of trade relation.
The Forum was attended by a host of dignitaries, including the Yunnan Governor, Ministers, Ambassadors and delegates from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Maldives, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal and Bhutan.
The officials stated that South Asia now predominantly needs to consider the open regional approach as followed in East Asia and that it would certainly be a positive and more prudent move to remove unnecessary tariffs, other restrictive rules of origin and other associated barriers in the South Asia Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA).
''We feel South Asia should not view the process of bilateral FTAs within the region as inimical to the regional cooperation process,'' ICC official Arijit Sharma stated, adding ICC would take all-out efforts to materialise the bilateral trade between both the countries.
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