Business
US envoy to India stresses on improving trade ties
Kolkata, Feb 1
Describing US President Barack
Obama's visit as "transformative", that brought US-India relations to a
new level, the American envoy to India Sunday said improving the
economic ties was a key area.
Speaking on the occasion of a book
launch here, US Ambassador Richard Rahul Verma said the US was
endeavouring to become India's "best partner".
"This was a visit
which pushed the relationship to a different level. The best line of the
visit is that the president said India and US are natural partners, we
know that. But, he said, we want to be India's best partner," said
Verma.
"We articulated different vision for our relationship and
talked about cooperation in East Asia, on maritime issue, humanitarian
issue, combating terrorism. We issued something called the Delhi
declaration of friendship - something we haven't done with any other
country," he said.
About economic ties, Verma lamented the low volume of two-way trade.
"Economic
and trade ties were major issues during the talks and it has been
agreed to increase the two-way trade by at least five time the current
volume.
"While the current trade volume is satisfactory, the
percentage of export that go from US to India is two percent and vice
versa its one percent, so we are barely reaching our potential," he
said.
Launching Swadesh Chatterjee's "Building Bridges: The Role
of Indian Americans in Indo-US Relations", Verma said US and India have
agreed to collaborate on jointly designing and producing defence
equipment besides signing a 10 year deal for joint military exercises.
"We
had quite breakthrough in defence, signing a 10-year deal to bring our
militaries together, we will do more training, more exercises. We agreed
to start building and designing things together. We have picked four
projects that we going to work on jointly and also formed two working
groups for military assistance," he said.
About the civil nuclear
pact for which Chatterjee played a key role in pushing the deal, Verma
credited the heads of the two countries for finally clinching the deal
that had been in the limbo for a decade.
"We had a breakthrough
understanding in the civil nuclear deal which had got stuck in the
liability issue since the day it was passed. But it took the leaders of
the two countries to get the breakthrough. This is surely a great
pathway forward not just for US or other companies but for India's
ability to generate non carbon-based electricity," added Verma.
"The
president during his departure told me that now, it was the time for
the hard work to begin, and we are ready to begin that hard work," he
sai