India looks to seal pact on IT and software with China

[Srinivas_K]

India looks to seal pact on IT and software with China

NEW DELHI: India will push for an agreement on information technology and software with China during the third round of strategic and economic dialogue beginning Tuesday in Beijing even as it tries to protect its markets from a flood of Chinese goods.

Asia's two largest economies are also expected to hammer out an agreement to develop India's railway infrastructure, which includes improving heavy haul operations, station development and speeding up trains, as part of the dialogue.< ..

"They want to get access to our electronics hardware sector and want India to harmonise its standards to theirs. China wants to get into mobile telephony, digital TV, audio, but we are not interested in that as we want to develop our domestic industry," the official said. "We will ensure that our interests are not compromised." Nasscom President R Chandrashekhar recently said India's electronic hardware suffered from a 'competitive disability' when compared with countries such as China due to to reasons that included the high cost of finance, power and uncertainty over logistics.

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India looks to seal pact on IT and software with China - The Economic Times

 

[Srinivas_K]

Growing trade imbalance not sustainable, India tells China
The growing bilateral trade imbalance, skewed heavily in Beijing's favour, is not sustainable, India conveyed to China on Tuesday during an annual economic dialogue between the two Asian giants grappling a festering border dispute amid calls for greater economic cooperation.

Calculated at $35 million, the deficit is not only eating into India's share of bilateral business, it also raises the spectre among many that China is dictating terms of the trade between the two countries. Simply put, China exports more to India than the other way around.

And Beijing's continued reluctance to open up its market to Indian products, like medicines and software technology, could eat into the fledgling confidence required for a balanced bilateral trade between countries long plagued by mistrust borne of reasons historical.

"I must, at this stage, mention the growing imbalance in our trade which is a cause of concern in India," the Planning Commission deputy chief, Montek Singh Ahluwalia told a gathering of Chinese peers.

India's indignation on the trade imbalance has been shared with the Chinese before. But whether Beijing was looking to address it wasn't clear after Ahluwalia's interaction with the Indian media on Tuesday evening.

Ahluwalia is leading a delegation of Indian bureaucrats and technocrats to Beijing for the SED to thrash out broad parameters of economic cooperation with Chinese officials, led by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) head, Xu Shaoshi.

At the interaction over coffee and cookies, Ahluwalia said India was looking at China to speed up its railways, and not build a high-speed railway network.

Japan is doing a feasibility study to build a high-speed rail network in India. But China, according to him, could help India in increasing the Indian railways to increase its speed, rebuild stations, and help in hauling larger amount of freight.
Growing trade imbalance not sustainable, India tells China - Hindustan Times