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US Ambassador to India Nancy Powell has said that India should engage with the US to sort out differences over difficult issues, such as intellectual property rights and taxation.
The suggestion comes days before the office of the US Trade Representative is scheduled to come out with a report that could black-list India as a ‘priority foreign country’ leading to economic sanctions for its alleged lax intellectual property rules.
Powell also called for greater cooperation in civil aviation, defence, infrastructure, energy, healthcare, IT services and agriculture to achieve the target of a five-fold jump in bilateral trade to $500 billion, as outlined by US Vice-President Joe Biden last year.
“One possibility might be the convening of a Track 1.5 event during the first 100 days of the new Indian government to begin a conversation on how we can best accomplish this task,” she said.
Defending India’s intellectual property regime, Industry Secretary Amitabh Kant said India had a well settled policy that was compliant with World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules. “The Indian Patent Act is a comprehensive regulation which is TRIPS-compliant and is rigidly enforced. It is a transparent policy with checks and balances subject to legal scrutiny,” he said.
Both Powell and Kant were speaking at the Annual General Meeting of the American Chamber of Commerce in New Delhi.
India may drag the US to the WTO in case it labels the country as a ‘priority foreign country’ and imposes unilateral economic sanctions on it, officials from the Commerce and Industry Ministry had earlier said.
Powell, who resigned from her post recently and who is set to leave for the US by the end of May, said while her country was strongly opposed to forced local content requirements (as reflected in India’s policy on solar energy), it was sympathetic to the desire to develop a stronger manufacturing sector and was ready to discuss how India might do so without constraining trade. “By the same token, we ask that India engage with the US, at senior and working levels, to have those difficult discussions on issues such as intellectual property rights and taxation,” she said.
Powell also stressed on the need for advancing talks on the Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) with India. “We need to push forward these negotiations because a successful BIT will bring benefits to both countries, and could also pave the way for more far-reaching agreements that could potentially yield much larger trade results for both our economies,” she said.
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