The Minister for Trade, Simon Crean, met on May 20, 2008 with Indian Minister for Commerce and Industry, Kamal Nath, in Melbourne for annual bilateral trade discussions, says a Foreign Affairs and Trade Ministry media release.
India is the world’s second fastest growing major economy, with growth rates around 8-9 per cent per annum.
“Australia has an historic opportunity to build a stronger relationship with this emerging power in our region,” said Mr Crean.
India is Australia’s fastest growing major export market for both goods and services – increasing at over 30 percent annually over the last five years.
“While India is already Australia’s sixth largest merchandise export market and eighth largest services market there is potential to do much more together,” said Mr Crean.
“Our economies have striking economic complementarities and are natural trade and investment partners. I am committed to taking the bilateral relationship with India to a higher level.”
This is the third time Mr Crean has met Mr Nath, including in India during one of his first overseas visits in government. He is keen to ensure that Australia is best positioned to capitalise on the potential of the relationship, particularly in the resources and energy sectors, but also from Australia’s competencies in services, manufactures, biotechnology and agriculture.
He said the discussions covered our broad cooperation in multilateral, regional economic fora and our bilateral trade ties.
“We reaffirmed our common commitment to a successful conclusion to the Doha Round this year and our willingness to contribute to efforts to bring that about,” said Mr Crean.
“We also welcomed the release overnight in Geneva of the revised negotiating texts on agriculture and industrial goods. This shows there’s been a significant narrowing of gaps in a number of areas, reflecting the good progress that has been made in recent weeks and months.”
The two countries are partners in the East Asia Summit and Australia supports India’s membership of APEC when the moratorium expires.
“We also welcomed the good momentum established in the joint FTA feasibility study and committed to adopting a bold and ambitious approach to the study,” said Mr Crean.
The two ministers agreed the report of the study should be presented to Government by the end of 2008.
Mr Crean also discussed Australia’s market access requests with Mr Nath, as well as Australia’s concerns about India’s sugar export subsidies. He reiterated that Australia sought an end to the subsidies.
“It is in Australia’s national interests that our economic links with India continue to broaden,” he said. “Our two countries signed a memorandum of understanding on intellectual property cooperation and have also begun new dialogues and exchanges on economic policy, water management issues and competition policy.
“Our people-to-people links are helping cement India as a key economic partner for Australia,” said Mr Crean.
“This current financial year India has become the largest source of skilled migrants to Australia. It is also the second largest source of business and student visas. These links will ensure our economic relationship endures and continues to mature.”
Mr Nath was accompanied by a large Indian business delegation, highlighting the growing diversity and strength of the business to business relationship.
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August 9th, 2011 at 1:25 am
Could you please use a spell check when writing such articles. You cannot even spell Australia correctly in your title misspelt as Autralia.
Probably busy eating Rossogollas and not paying attention during your English classes when you were in school.
You give a bad name to the editorial with such horrible spelling.
Take more lessons in spelling and grammar and you will find it more useful when you have to write articles for a website of this nature Mr Ashok.