The United States ambassador to India David Mulford called for the removal of a ban on Foreign Direct Investment in the retail sector in India. He said that India’s economic growth, with the accompanying demographic changes, would lead to necessary changes in the retail sector. This would specially be true for the metropolitan cities.

“Such change will invariably lead to greater choice at lower prices for more consumers including offerings of more food and beverage products from the US and elsewhere,” he said.

However such progress has not been happening, mainly due to the restrictions on FDI in the retail sector. If these were eliminated, the domestic food-processing sector would stand to benefit, especially since the need to implement supply chain efficiencies would come to the fore.

The other sector with the slow opening of which he expressed disappointment was agriculture. He pointed out that India’s trade surplus with the U.S./ in the agriculture sector stood at $857 million in 2003, while it stood at a mere $309 million the other way—what’s more, it took well over six years for the figures to double in number to the said amount. Mulford also stressed the need for new market openings from developing economies like India’s, saying that if this were to happen, such economies would themselves stand to benefit, with the opening of new markets for their products.