Senior Indian and US officials will meet after the Parliament's Budget session ends on May 8 to identify sectors for investment and technology sharing.
India has sought US feedback on a draft intellectual property rights policy, put up for comments by the public, to sort out issues raised by US President Barack Obama and American companies at the India-US CEO Forum on Monday. The two sides discussed these issues when Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman met her US counterpart Penny Pritzker on Tuesday. "We will have a group of officials from both sides. They will identify sectors where priority investments and technology can come in," Sitharaman told reporters after the meeting.
Issues related to the totalisation agreement and visas also came up for discussion at Tuesday's meeting.
The minister invited comments from the US on the draft intellectual property rights policy, which was prepared by a six-member think tank. "We invited the Americans to have a look at the policy and invited inputs from them on the draft policy," she added.
US companies have alleged India's intellectual property rights regime is discriminatory, particularly for the pharmaceuticals industry. But India has said its laws are compliant with the World Trade Organisation's norms. On Monday, US companies also raised the issue of counterfeit and piracy in India. Bob Iger, CEO of Walt Disney Company, complained against film piracy in the country.
At Tuesday's meeting, the Indian side highlighted recent policy decisions, such as hiking the foreign direct investment (FDI) cap in insurance and defence.
"We have asked for possibilities where technology could be shared too and also investments to help small and medium enterprises," Sitharaman said.
The Americans also raised issues on India's tax regime. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday assured the US industry of a predictable tax policy. Recently, the US and India signed an agreement to resolve transfer pricing disputes. India is targeting to sign the advance pricing agreement with the US in three months, but only after the framework for pending cases starts yielding results. FDI of $1.35 billion has come from the US in eight months of the current financial year, higher than the $806 million in 2012-13. However, this constituted only seven per cent of the total FDI inflow of $18.9 billion into the country in April-November 2014.
Sitharaman said her team also sought US investments and technology transfer to small and medium scale enterprises among other sectors. Sitharaman said, "Many of the youths are wonderfully qualified but do not have skills. We need skill imparting courses. For us to have them within India will take time, but whereever capacitites exist particularly in US we have referred to that and asked them to bring in skill imparting courses."
On takeaways from US President Barack Obama's visit, the minister said, "The first takeaway is that it has lifted India-US relationship to a higher level. It is a visit which has clearly brought India and the US to the centre stage. A Visit, where India spoke and was spoken to as an equal," she said.
