India and US decided to share best practices and technology in the Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) sector while the latter will bring its ‘Silicon Valley to India’ to encourage start-ups here.
The two countries held their second Strategic and Commercial Dialogue (S&CD) in New Delhi, with stakeholders from both the countries in participation.
Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman attended the meet, along with Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj, US Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, and Secretary to Indian government Rita Teaotia. The strategic meeting had a India-US CEO Forum on the sidelines of the conference, which was co-chaired by Tata Group’s Cyrus Mistry representing the Indian delegation, and Honeywell’s Dave Cote from the US side.
At the meet, Sitharaman said that “while the bilateral trade between India and US stood at $105 billion, amid a sluggish global economy, but this figure was much below the potential as the trade complementarity between the two large democracies is very high.”
Sitharaman, at a joint press briefing, said: “A number of recommendations made during the previous two editions have already been acted upon.”
At the meeting, it was decided that the attention of the two countries will be focused on SMEs. “We would be looking at creating a platform for sharing of best practices and technology as also address issues of finance and market access for SMEs and thus promote their integration into global value chairns.”
She said that the two countries have also agreed on a programme called ‘Silicon Valley comes to India’, “which will have experts from USA coming to India to interact with start ups and provide the required momentum to Indian entrepreneurial eco-system.”
India and US hope to boost their bilateral trade by nearly 5-fold to $500 billion. For this, “Both the sides will have to work in close cooperation and resolve impediments to trade,” she said. “I assure you we remain strongly committed to make India a better place to do business and to progressively liberalize our economy to facilitate greater investment.”
Source: Daily News & Analysis
Image Courtesy: dnaindia
