The Hindu Business Line : Indo-US space meet calls for trade-friendly policies

THE just concluded Indo-US space conference has called for creation of a trade-friendly environment that can spur a variety of partnerships in the space sector between the two countries.

The five-day conference has entrusted industry forums on either side to take up with their respective governments a "review and refinement" of the export control policies and barriers to trade in space related goods.

It also agreed that the multi-billion dollar space sector should be included in the joint High Technology Cooperation Group (HTCG). The industry groups are also expected to meet separately around August and make their requests in time for the HTCG meeting slated for October-November this year.

Summing up the potential areas of Indo-US collaboration in space commerce and the issues facing them, Mr K.R. Sridhara Murthi, Excecutive Director of ISRO's export arm Antrix, said at the concluding session on Friday that the expertises of both sides should be tapped. "The Indian and global market offers enough space for effective Indo-US collaboration." However, the major obstacle was the US control policy on dual-use exports (that is, non-civilian and missile technology use).

Many exporters had not submitted applications for export licence because they had no hope of getting them under the existing system of presumption of denial. This area of high-tech trade especially needs predictable, reliable supplies of products, and, hence, timely licences from the US Department of Commerce, Mr Murthi said.

For the medium term, the two industry groups have been urged to explore ways to outsource from each other satellite components, ground equipment and even capacity on satellites. They would review the existing models to jointly build satellites: ISRO and Boeing Satellite Services are about to start talks on such an arrangement.

Mr Murthi also listed sharing of satellite services market, launch and support services among areas of partnership.

The Earth imagery and value added service, in which the Indian remote sensing satellites have made a mark internationally, can also have industrial partnerships between the two countries. The industries need to have common standards. There are also enough opportunities in GPS and satellite-based navigational applications such as the GAGAN project that AAI and ISRO have taken up.

A Vision Statement identified applications such as telemedicine, tele-education, training, disaster management and scientific exchanges, among other areas to team up in.