Indian and Chinese businessmen Wednesday signed agreements worth over $2.4 billion at the Zhejiang China-India Business Cooperation Conference to strengthen the bilateral trade relationship.
"Memoranda of understanding worth over $2.4 billion were signed at the conference. Amongst the MoUs signed, the biggest is between Kunlun Chuangyuan Investment Co, Ltd. (Zhejiang) and Kiri Infrastructure Pvt Ltd (India) for the project 'India International Trade Centre in Gujarat' worth $1,500 million," said the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) in a statement.
"We are happy that China has acknowledged that trade deficit is a matter of concern to us; our five year trade and economic cooperation pact is geared to addressing this. Market access issues faced by our firms in sectors like pharmaceuticals, IT and agricultural products should get resolved with renewed effort from China to import value added products from India," said FICCI president and CPRO chairman Sidharth Birla.
"It is important that Chinese companies come to invest in India because the trade imbalance is unsustainable in the long run. It will be difficult to continue this business unless and until Chinese companies relocate and manufacture in India and from India penetrate the global market," said Amitabh Kant, secretary, department of industrial policy and promotion, at the conference.
The bilateral trade between India-China in 2013-14 was $65.8 billion. Kant mentioned that the trade imbalance is too striking as India's exports to China are $15 billion, while China's exports to India is at $51 billion.
