Mar. 8 – India and the U.S. will sign a crucial agreement on March 17, laying down fresh rules and objectives for mutual trade and investment.
Indian Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma has said that he would be traveling to Washington next week for the signing of the Framework for Cooperation in Trade and Investment.
The two countries have been engaged in negotiating this pact for the last few years with an intention to remove impediments in their economic relations. The U.S. has been seeking greater market access in India and raising concern over protection of intellectual property rights.
In the past year, India-U.S. trade amounted to about US$39.71 billion, while the U.S. was India’s third largest partner both in trade and investment in 2009.
The two countries already have an institutional arrangement for promoting their economic ties. Created in 2005, The India-U.S. Trade Policy Forum has been serving, “a core element of the economics, trade and agriculture pillar of the Strategic Dialogue and remains the principal bilateral forum for discussing trade and investment,” the trade agenda of the US President Barack Obama for 2010 has said. The new framework is expected to expand on this to further boost U.S. investment into India.
