New Delhi, Apr. 29 (ANI): Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has called for a balanced outcome from the ongoing EU-India Bilateral Trade and Investment Agreement (BTIA) negotiations.
In its interaction with the visiting Members of the European Parliament, CII re-iterated its support for an early conclusion to the BTIA, but sought greater understanding from the European Union while seeking access in sensitive sectors like automobiles, which support a large workforce in the country.
Members of Indian Parliament from across all major political parties also attended the meeting.
Members across party lines acknowledged the importance of strengthening economic and trade ties with the European Union while making a strong point to keep subsistence agriculture in India outside the purview of the BTIA.
The IT sector, for whom EU is an attractive market, called for liberalized work visa across the region and data adequate status for India. India's IT industry is of US$100million and provides services to all major corporate giants of world.
Till date not a single case of data breach has been reported against Indian IT companies. At present EU does not recognize India as data secure country because lack of necessary legislations and regulatory authority.
The Ambassador of EU to India, Joao Cravinho, said that on the issue of data secure status that India has been seeking, the EU would not be able to provide much under the BTIA as it was a legislative issue.
However, he was of the view that India and EU could work towards resolving this issue at the earliest outside of the BTIA.
The Ambassador of EU to India also clarified that EU was not seeking any TRIPS plus commitments from India in these negotiations and was willing to recognize the concerns of the generic drug manufacturers in the country.
During a detailed discussion on liberalization of the automobile sector, the EU members said that though access for automobiles is on the top of their agenda they were willing to work out a balanced outcome.
They proposed to build a supply chain across the two regions particularly in some key sectors of interest to both sides.
Automobile has been a major source of employment in India. The sector has attracted FDI, contributed to growth of manufacturing and created high quality jobs. This could be possible largely through liberal auto FDI policy of India. This has resulted in creation of many joint ventures across various segments of automobile sector of India.
Undoubtedly, these joint ventures have helped Indian companies in gaining competitive strength but we would very much like the current policy regime to continue for some more time. This is more so important in view of our increased emphasis on reviving the growth of manufacturing sector.
While EU is the largest source of FDI into India, the total investment is still not very significant. The cumulative FDI has crossed over ?20 billion since 2000. In this context, CII would like to urge European car manufacturers (most of them are already in India) to invest more and take advantage of huge market size of India rather than demanding tariff reduction on automobiles.
The meeting was attended senior representatives of TATA, WIPRO, Lupin and Araina enterprises and sectoral bodies like Automotive Component Manufacturers' Association (ACMA) and Nasscom. (ANI)
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