Trade between India-US should be 5 times more, says VP.
By Deepak Chitnis
The United States Vice-President Joe Biden has called on India to change its protocols involving American companies working in India in order to facilitate relations and trades between the two nations.
Biden said that “[India’s] instinct to protect [its] industries is understandable. But we need to be candid with each other about the obstacles which exist when economies do business”.
Once characterized by President Barack Obama as a “defining partnership of the 21st century,” relations between the world’s largest and world’s oldest democracy have strained in recent years, in large part due to the problems American companies face when trying to conduct business in India.
Biden’s visit, the first by a vice-president since George H.W. Bush in 1984 and the first visit from a senior White House official since Obama visited in 2010, aims to re-affirm those ties while also charting a course for the future.
Speaking at the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) in Mumbai, Biden said, “these are tough problems, but they have to be negotiated and worked through to meet the potential of this relationship.”
He went on to say that trade between the US and India should be at least five times more than what it is today, and the way to make that happen is to make Indian regulations less restrictive for American companies.
“Over the last 13 years it has quintupled and it should quintuple again,” he said.
Biden’s visit to India is scheduled to end today, after which the vice-president will fly to Singapore.