India very close to sealing interim trade deal with US: Top official

New Delhi, Dec 15 (IANS) Commerce Secretary Rajesh Agrawal said on Monday that India is “very close” to concluding an interim trade deal with the US to bring down tariffs, but stopped short of fixing any timeline on the issue.

“We are very close on closing the initial framework deal, but I don’t want to put a timeline to it,” the Commerce Secretary told journalists here.

“We have done six rounds of talks with the US, where we have discussed both the BTA (bilateral trade agreement) as well as an interim deal to lower reciprocal tariffs. There’s a fair expectation that both countries will be able to agree to a deal to lower reciprocal tariffs,” he said.

“The visit of Deputy USTR was to take a stock of our trade relations and to see where we are on the BTA as well as the framework deal,” Agrawal said.

US Trade Representative (USTR) Jamieson Greer also said recently that the US has received the “best-ever offers from India” on the proposed trade agreement.

Speaking at a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee hearing in Washington, Greer said that there is resistance in India to certain row crops (corn, soybean, wheat, and cotton) being exported to its market from the US.

Reacting to reports on allegations by American officials that India is “dumping” rice in the US, Agrawal said: “More than 80 per cent of our rice exports to the US is Basmati rice, which is higher than the general price of rice, so there is no case of dumping here. We already have a 50 per cent tariff on rice, so I don’t see additional duties on rice as of now.”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump also held a telephonic conversation last week following the visit of a high-level team of US officials to Delhi for trade talks.

Meanwhile, the government has implemented measures, including GST rate cuts, a promotion package to diversify export markets and introduced labour reforms to cushion the economy from the impact of punitive tariffs imposed by the US on India’s exports.

India is also working on diversifying its export market. As part of this strategy, the government is looking at as many as 300 products, including engineering goods, pharma, agri, and chemicals, which can be exported to Russia with the two countries targeting a $100 billion trade by 2030.

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