India today asked Japan at the World Trade Organization to remove a range of burdensome restrictions on Indian generic drugs, fruits and vegetables, marine products,and short-term movement of professional services’ providers. The occasion was the trade policy review on Japan.
India said it shares the difficulties faced by Tokyo in grappling with the worsening downturn, but New Delhi is as concerned about overly restrictive hurdles faced by Indian exporters in the Japanese market.
Conditions such as- mandatory bioequivalence testing of each generic product, partnering with Japanese trade companies for local marketing and the legal need to keep product inventories for five years- have hampered "access for high-quality but reasonably priced Indian generic products in the Japanese market," complained India’s deputy trade envoy, Ravi Bangar.
Besides, stringent sanitary and phyto-sanitary restrictions on fruits and vegetables, strict quotas for import of marine products "like squids, seaweed, mackerel, sardines" and excessive restrictions on Indian professional and computer-related services provides have reduced export prospects, he said.
India and Japan are currently negotiating a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA). The two-way trade between the two countries, now at $12 billion, is expected to grow substantially once the CEPA is implemented, he said.
The trade policy review provides a platform for WTO members to vent their grievances on restrictions and barriers faced in the country under review. Ahead of the review, the WTO prepares a detailed report, chronicling macro-economic developments and the overall trade policy regime.
Japan is facing a bad worst downturn, with its GDP having declined by 3.3 per cent during the last quarter of 2008. In the face of gloomy economic conditions and unprecedented recession in the Japanese economy, several WTO members shared Tokyo’s concern on its mounting problems at this juncture.
Tokyo was, however, also asked to improve its labour productivity and to cut its fiscal deficit. Besides, India urged Japan to prune its income subsidy payments, amounting to over $50 billion.
