Biden for liberalised trade regime, sets $500b trade target

US Vice President Joe Biden today said New Delhi should take fresh initiatives to help remove trade barriers and inconsistencies in tax regime and this could propel annual bilateral trade to USD 500 billion.
He said the target was achievable if both countries made the "right choices".
Biden, however, welcomed relaxation in FDI norms in certain sectors including telecom, defence and insurance and hailed India as a "rising power".
While not setting a deadline for this massive rise in bilateral trade, which is currently driven by software services, Biden, the first US Vice President to visit India in three decades, noted that the two-way trade grew five-fold in the last 13 years to touch USD 100 billion.

"Our bilateral trade has increased five-fold to touch USD 100 billion in the past 13 years. We see tremendous opportunity and there is no reason if our countries make the right choices trade cannot grow five fold or even more," he said delivering a lecture on 'US-India Partnership' at the Bombay Stock Exchange.
Welcoming the recent relaxation in the FDI regime by the government, Biden, however, called for more such measures, saying "we still have a lot of work to do on a wide range of issues, including caps on FDI, inconsistent tax system, barriers to market access, civil nuclear cooperation, bilateral investment treaty and policies protecting innovations."

"A lot more is needed to be done to remove trade barriers" because India has "risen exponentially" over the past decade primarily due to the "bold steps" it took in 1991 towards liberalisation.
The US Vice-President also said those economic reforms have helped boost the country's overall exports from USD 20 billion then to over USD 300 billion in FY13.