The Hindu Business Line : ‘Trade deficit with China needs to be addressed’

Beijing, Jan. 14 While a trade deficit with China in itself was “not so bad,” in the long term the deficit did need to be addressed for trade to be sustainable, said the Commerce Minister, Mr Kamal Nath, in an interaction with the press following a business summit held in the Chinese capital on Monday morning.

Mr Nath revealed that he had urged his Chinese counterparts to lift technical barriers to trade and eliminate non-tariff barriers. In particular he had raised the issue of the 25 per cent cess on coking coal that China’s government had recently imposed to the detriment of India’s steel industry, as well as the continuing phytosanitary restrictions imposed on the import of fruits and vegetables from India.

India’s expectations

The Minister went on to say that he expected Beijing to give clearance to Jet Airways for its proposed Mumbai-Shanghai-San Francisco flight route as well as TV landing rights for Zee Entertainment, in the near future.

His expectations were based on the fact that India has just given the go-ahead to Chinese cargo carrier Great Wall Airlines to fly to Mumbai and Chennai, a move that New Delhi had initially blocked due to security concerns related to key nuclear sites located near the concerned airports.

India has also recently given Chinese broadcaster, CCTV-9 TV landing rights.

The Minister added that India did not have any China-specific restrictions on investment into the country and while there were some locational issues for foreign investment to do with security concerns, these applied to all foreign investments equally.

Olympics infrastructure

When talking about potential areas for collaboration, Mr Nath revealed that he was in dialogue with the Chinese for shifting some of their surplus Olympic-related infrastructure to India, for the Commonwealth Games. The Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh had visited Beijing’s National Olympic Stadium on Sunday, a building he said “set the bar for imagining what was possible.”