Published on : Friday, June 13, 2014
India is gearing up to increase its engagement with China big time, primarily in the services sector. The tourism ministry plans to run the ‘Incredible India’ campaign in the Chinese media during the months to come besides introducing Chinese audio recordings at popular Indian monuments and providing training to guides to attract more tourists from its northern neighbour.
Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi concluded his two-day visit to India on Tuesday during which he met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and foreign minister Sushma Swaraj, where he expressed keenness to forge stronger ties with India through investment in infrastructure besides importing more from India.
New Delhi is working with Beijing to ease market access barriers for Indian services exports in sectors like IT, tourism and health, which will not only balance the wide merchandise trade deficit but also ensure better integration of the two Asian economies. The commerce department is already in talks with Beijing for mutual recognition of medical degrees that will allow movement of Indian doctors to China.
In IT, the Indian government is pushing for easing of licencing norms to allow participation of Indian companies in local projects. Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) will visit India in October to hold talks with Indian IT majors. Recently India announced making visa process easy for Chinese visitors under which tourist and business visas will be processed in two working days.
The move is an attempt to leverage India’s strength to balance the merchandise trade deficit, which stood at $35 billion in 2013-14 against just $1.08 billion in 2001-02. While India’s services exports stand at around $150 billion, exports to China account for just for just about $1 billion.
“Services side cooperation should have been quite substantial but it isn’t. The two governments and the private sector have started engaging in specifics to ease market access barriers and tap opportunities, which will be of interest to both the economies,” said an Indian commerce department official.
Tags: Blog News, Tourism News
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