Commerce minister Suresh Prabhu on Friday said that India and the US will hold officer-level meetings by the end of this month to discuss all \u201cpending\u201d issues. These issues are related to visa, continuation of certain concession for exports, duty on steel and aluminium, and prices of certain medical devices in India. Prabhu, who was in Washington earlier this week, said he held talks with US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and US trade representative Robert Lighthizer to find out ways to enhance trade and investments between the two countries.<\/p>\n
The Indian Express had reported on June 9 that the world\u2019s largest association of medical device companies, Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed), is learnt to have conveyed to Ross and Lighthizer that the NDA government\u2019s flagship \u2018Make in India\u2019 platform has been used to \u201cjustify protectionist measures\u201d and has \u201cnot encouraged US medical technology firms to increase their presence in India\u201d.<\/p>\n
Prabhu said that the meetings were significantly important in the backdrop of the fact that the US was not even ready to talk on trade related issues with its close trading partners like Canada.\u201dOn the day of visit, US President Donald Trump made a statement about G7 In that backdrop the meeting took place. Meeting with the USTR went very well. We made substantive progress on trade and investment issues,\u201d Prabhu said.<\/p>\n
\u201c officers\u2019 meeting will take place very soon to discuss all pending issues. We have agreed to work on resolution of various issues and address the concerns of either side,\u201d Prabhu added. He informed that the meeting of the officers might take place by the end of this month. India has been raising concerns over negative impact of tightening of visa norms by the US on Indian IT sector. It has also asked the US to continue extending duty free access under Generalized System of Preferences to its products such as chemicals and engineering.<\/p>\n
A silver lining in India\u2019s otherwise lacklustre exports story, around one-fourth of all imports into the US under the GSP, which provides low or zero duty access to over 3,500 products, is from India. GSP provides low or zero duty access to over 3,500 products and exports from India to the US under it have been rising consistently over the last three years, bucking the broader declining trend in overall exports during this period.<\/p>\n
AdvaMed is one of the two lobby groups apart from the US dairy industry that had filed petitions requesting a review of India\u2019s GSP benefits citing \u201cIndian trade barriers\u201d affecting US exports in those sectors, based on which the review has now been undertaken.<\/p>\n
One of India\u2019s demands have been an exemption from the hike in import duty on certain steel and aluminium items. On the other hand, the US has raised concerns on issues, including high duties on dairy products and motor cycle Harley-Davidson. It has also flagged issues on prices of medical devices in India. In order to make medical devices affordable, India had imposed price caps on coronary stents and knee implants in February and August 2017. AdvaMed has strongly opposed these caps stating that it has the \u201cpotential to block innovations and limit access to world-class medical care and options to deserving patients\u201d.<\/p>\n
When asked about the impact of possible US trade sanctions on Iran, Prabhu said: \u201cUN sanctions we have to follow that but if some country imposes it, then we have to deal in a different way and that is what we are doing\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Commerce minister Suresh Prabhu on Friday said that India and the US will hold officer-level meetings by the end of this month to discuss all \u201cpending\u201d issues. These issues are related to visa, continuation of certain concession for exports, duty on steel and aluminium, and prices of certain medical devices in India. Prabhu, who was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34343,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34342"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34344,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34342\/revisions\/34344"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}