The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has identified a four-pronged strategy for increasing bilateral trade and investment with the European Union (EU).
CII will be discussing these issues with industry and government officials at the Third Indo-EU Business Summit at Copenhagen on October 8-9. Ashok Soota, president of CII, is leading a 35-member CII delegation to Copenhagen.
CII is of the opinion that while export volumes for some products have been increasing, some products are facing several non-tariff and tariff barriers.
These sectors include, textiles, processed food products, chemicals and electronic and engineering equipment.
The anti-dumping mechanism provided under the World Trade Organisation agreement is also used by the EU to work as a non-tariff barrier for textile products such as bed linen, which has faced back to back anti-dumping investigations for over eight years. CII has set a target of 20-25 per cent growth per year in exports to Europe.
CII is also perturbed by the EU move to provide higher non-reciprocal access for products such as textiles for some competing countries.
The recent move to provide higher GSP (generalised system of preferences) quotas in textiles to Pakistan has hurt the Indian industry.
CII is also of the view that very little technology or investment flows from Europe to India.
In case of investment, while the total approved investments since 1991 stands at over 55 billion euros, the actual flow has been far less.
India would like to see an at least 10 billion euro per annum investment flow from EU to the country in the next few years.
CII will also like to work closely with European industry in the field of research and designing for manufacturing products as well as for new areas such as biotechnology and in the entertainment industry.
CII is also keen to work closely with European industry to tap Third World markets.
CII favours setting up an institutional forum comprising government and industry representatives to identify areas and policy guidelines necessary in India and the EU to jointly work in Third World markets in Africa and Asia.
