The Hindu Business Line : For reforms to succeed address poor nations' needs: PM

Prof Romano Prodi, President , European Commission, being welcomed by the Prime Minister, Mr A. B. Vajapayee, along with the External Affairs Minister, Mr Yashwant Sinha, at the Special Plenary session of the Fourth India-EU Business Summit in the Capital on Saturday. - Kamal Narang

New Delhi , Nov. 29

THE Prime Minister, Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee, on Saturday while cautioning the developed countries against imposing non-tariff barriers, said popular support for economic liberalisation would collapse if the developmental concerns of the poorer countries were not addressed.

Addressing the Special Plenary Session of the Fourth India-EU Business Summit, the Prime Minister stressed that India would have to take into consideration the livelihood of millions of people while taking decisions on the sensitive agriculture issue at the World Trade Organisation.

He also expressed concern over the mismatch in India's share in the European Union's (EU) global trade, which is under two per cent and said it should be corrected by a wider consciousness and better understanding of the larger picture of the India-EU partnership.

``We need to look carefully at the unfortunate reality that non-tariff barriers are gradually rising, even as tariffs are falling in response to globalisation,'' the Prime Minister said adding a range of issues from anti-dumping measures to manufacturing standards need to be looked at with a sense of proportion.

``In India, we have been careful to ensure that our liberalisation measures are non-directional. We do not increase tariffs or raise barriers to target any region or group of countries,'' he said.

The Prime Minister also expressed concern over opposition in some quarters to business process outsourcing into the country.

Mr Vajpayee said India attaches greater importance to trade and economic cooperation with the European Union, which is the largest trading and investment partner, an important source of technology in critical sectors, and a major destination for India's service providers.

Inviting investments from the European countries, Mr Vajpayee said they would have attractive opportunities from the $25-billion `Sagarmala' project, which aims to build and upgrade a necklace of modern ports in India, while supporting international and coastal shipping along its peninsular coastline.

In infrastructure, he said the National Highway Development Project, to upgrade or build over 15,000-km of roads linking the major metropolitan centres and rural regions, is well under way.

``Though India is still very much a developing country, we have put behind us the phase when developmental assistance was at the core of our transactions with the developed world,'' he said, adding New Delhi is ready for a transition to more ``mature'' partnerships.

He said the India-EU interaction in trade requires some introspection and analysis if it were to double in the next five years from the somewhat modest level of 25-billion euros currently.

The Prime Minister said there is tremendous scope to enhance cooperation in the area of technology. ``Technology is an area which should figure much more in the India-Europe discourse. Indian expertise in the areas of information software technology is now reasonably well-known and we hope to replicate our software revolution in bio-technology and management," he said.

One of the technology areas with outstanding prospects for close India-EU collaboration is the Galileo Satellite Navigation Project that Europe is embarking on, he said.

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