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The much-awaited India-US Trade Policy Forum (TPF) met here today after a gap of more than four years with both sides seeking to address outstanding issues concerning bilateral trade and investment. Both sides have set a target of achieving $500 billion worth of trade in goods and services from the present $100 billion.
The meeting was chaired by Minister of State (independent charge) for commerce and industry Nirmala Sitharaman along with US Trade Representative Michael Froman. The meeting, which took place here for over one and a half hour, was held also attended by commerce secretary Rajeev Kher, DIPP secretary Amitabh Kant, additional secretary in commerce department JS Deepak and DIPP joint secretary DV Prasad among other.
"It was a very good meeting. They have understood our position. We will meet more often ... The dialogue will continue. It's not that the dialogue will take place after four years gap. It will be more often. We have expressed all concerns and addressed their issues," commerce secretary Rajeev Kher told Business Standard after the meeting.
A joint statement is expected to be issued later in the day. The last TPF was held in 2010.
The TPF was preceded by the first high-level meeting of the working group in intellectual property rights issues on Monday, where, apparently US has asked India to improve its IP standards.
Yesterday while addressing FICCI, Froman had said that it is in India's interest that it should implement and enforce a world-class IPR regimes.
"Patents, copyright, trade secrets. Piracy, counterfeiting, compulsory licensing. These are challenging issues, but dealing with them directly is critical if India is to play a leadership role in the knowledge economy, including on its way to becoming ‘Digital India.’ And in that regard, we have great interest in the ongoing review of India’s Intellectual Property Rights Policy," Froman said.
India and US had been entangled into a bitter tiff concerning IPR and patents. American firms, especially, the pharmaceuticals companies had been extremely vociferous in pointing fingers at lack of innovation in India because of a weak IPR regime. US had been also upset with some of the other Indian trade and industrial practises such as mandatory local procurement.
At a closed door roundtable with a senior industry group from the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Froman highlighted issues relating to IPR protection, local sourcing norms, regulatory challenges and mobility of high skilled labor. He stressed on the high standards for IPR being adopted by the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations and suggested that as an innovative economy, India needs to look at IPR norms more closely.
In a letter to Froman the US' National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) urged him to take up "longstanding bilateral trade irritants and new barriers imposed by the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi."
The TPF, which was established in 2005 is the premium forum for bilateral trade and has five main focus groups -agriculture, innovation and creativity, investment, services, tariffs and non-tariff barriers.
