India-ASEAN trade in goods doubles to $80 bn

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SME Times News Bureau | 25 Apr, 2013
Trade in goods between India and ASEAN countries has been growing a a rapid rate, doubling to $80 billion in 2011-12 since 2007-08 despite the global economic crisis, said Minister of State for External Affairs Preneet Kaur recently.

"India - ASEAN trade in goods has been robust, growing to $80 billion in 2011-12, doubling since 2007-08 despite the global economic crisis", said Kaur while addressing the conference on "India-ASEAN Project Partnership" at New Delhi organised by CII.

While highlighting the potential sectors she said that infrastructure would be a large area of cooperation in sectors such as railroads, ports, airports and roads. She also mentioned renewable energy, agriculture and IT are potential areas of cooperation.

Nguyen Thanh Tan, Ambassador, Embassy of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and Chair, ASEAN New Delhi Committee, congratulated CII for its engagement with the ASEAN region and for successfully organizing the India –ASEAN car rally last year.

Thanh said that connectivity plays a crucial role in promoting India ASEAN economic development, tourism and people-to-people links. He also said that to enhance trade both sides should focus on renewable energy, telecom, pharmaceuticals, tourism, energy and transport and infrastructure.

In his speech, Sanjay Kirloskar, Chairman and MD of Kirloskar Brothers Ltd said that in spite of enormous potential for businesses, India is still not a very important trading partner of ASEAN. He said that both India and ASEAN need to exploit all the available business opportunities to enhance trade.

Kirloskar also mentioned about the recently launched negotiations on Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) which will further deepen India-ASEAN economic partnership.

The RCEP aims to be the largest free-trade bloc in the world, comprising all 10 ASEAN nations and the 6 other countries with which the group has free-trade agreements (FTAs) - China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand. The grouping includes more than 3 billion people, has a combined GDP of about $17 trillion, and accounts for about 40 percent of world trade.

Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General of CII said that CII has been present in the region almost since the time the Government of India launched its ‘look east' policy and India and ASEAN entered into dialogue partnership, 20 years ago.

CII's engagement with ASEAN has been at several levels including government, business & industry and people to people. Several exhibitions has been organised in Indonesia, Myanmar, Singapore and Thailand.