India for stronger trade with East-Asian nations

 The Dollar Business Bureau The Union Minister of Commerce, on Friday, informed about the steps being carried out by the Government of India (GoI) towards ensuring a stronger economic cooperation and trade with East–Asian nations, in a global perspective. In view of the Tokyo Declaration for a stronger India-Japan global partnership, the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion(DIPP) set up a special team called ‘Japan Plus’, which is intended to facilitate and take ahead the investments from Japan. This special team that was formed on October 8, 2014, under DIPP, has been helping the Indian government in initiating, attracting and handholding the Japanese investments across various Indian sectors. The ‘Japan Plus’ team consisting of four Indian officials and two Japanese representatives, has so far guided over 120 Japanese companies towards doing business with India. The team has also reached out to various State governments of India with a proposal to set up industrial parks of international standards in order to provide ready-made operational platform with a basic infrastructure. According to the official statistics, the Foreign Direct Investments into India from Japan during June-December (2014) stands at $ 1,107.59 million. The Minister also informed about the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) that was signed between the GoI and Republic of Korea, aimed at key trade related issues like Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs), Goods and Services, investments, among others. The Minister said that the CEPA agreement that was signed on August, 2009, provides a larger scope for the investors and exporters from both sides to expand their business in tariff lines, where the tariffs remain reduced. Under a ‘Trade in Services’ category as per CEPA, Korea was also committed to provide a larger commercial scope for India in its sectors and sub-sectors. Under sub-sectors of ‘Other Business services’ category, the Korean government has also taken commitments to provide a better market scope for Indian service suppliers in areas like advertising, management consulting, inter-alia, technical inspection, placement of personnel, among others. Under India-Korea CEPA, the Indian government is also organizing various reach-out programmes across the country, in a move towards boosting Indian exports to Korea. During a period between 2009-10 and 2013-14, the bilateral trade between India and Korea has increased from $ 12 billion to $ 16.68 billion, which also includes increase in India’s exports from $ 3.42 billion to $ 4.20 billion.  

This article was published on March 13, 2015.