Invest In Smart Cities, Ports, Railways: India To Asean

By siliconindia | Thursday, 12 March 2015, 10:26 Hrs

"However, we need to make a special effort to achieve our target of enhancing trade to $100 billion by 2015, and our aspiration to double it to $200 billion by 2022," she said.

"We will have to significantly augment the utilisation level of the Agreement on Trade in Goods and further liberalise the tariff lines. I am glad that the process has started to revive the Asean-India Trade Negotiations Committee to kick-start these discussions," she added.

Noting that India has maritime boundaries with several Asean countries, she said it was important from a trade perspective.

"We have started negotiations on an Asean-India maritime transport cooperation agreement, and hope that it will be finalised by the end of the year," she said.

She said Asean lies at the core of India's 'Look East' policy and at the "centre of our dream of an Asian century".

She said India and the Asean countries need to intensify cooperation in security, trade, investment, connectivity and capacity building and strengthening people-to-people linkages.

Source: IANS