Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal held bilateral talks with his Chinese counterpart Wang Wentao
For the first time since India pulled out of the China-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) negotiations in 2019, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal held bilateral talks with his Chinese counterpart Wang Wentao on the sidelines of the 14th World Trade Organisation (WTO) interministerial conference in Cameroon last week.
“I also met after a long time, the minister from China with whom we discussed ways to expand trade, move towards more balanced trade and generate trust to help smooth bilateral trade between China and India and give greater opportunity for our exporters to export our pharmaceuticals, engineering goods, fish and farm products. All in all, a good start to generating greater opportunities for our exporters in China,” Goyal said Thursday while speaking about bilateral engagements at the WTO.
The talks between the two ministers come at a time when trade tensions between the two countries, simmering since 2020, have been showing signs of easing. While China has eased restriction of rare earth magnets and stepped up imports of Indian goods, Delhi has also moderated its restrictions on Chinese investments.
However, India has maintained its opposition to a China-led proposal at the WTO. After South Africa lifted its opposition to the Investment Facilitation for Development (IFD), India was the only country blocking the investment agreement.
“India has successfully been able to ensure that a plurilateral like Investment Facilitation for Development (IFD) cannot be brought into the Annexure 4 of the Marrakesh agreement,” Goyal said.
India-China relations had taken a hit following Chinese incursions along the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh, more so after the Galwan Valley clash in June 2020. A month before the clash, India had imposed restrictions on investments from China through Press Note 3 (PN3) in April 2020, making government approval mandatory for investments from countries sharing a land border with India.
The move was aimed at preventing opportunistic takeovers during the Covid-19 pandemic and had remained in force amid heightened national security concerns following the Galwan clash.
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Last month, the government set a 60-day deadline for processing and deciding investment proposals from countries sharing a land border in specified manufacturing sectors.
The PN3 was primarily meant for Chinese investors, as entities of Bangladesh and Pakistan can invest only under the government route, while investments from other border-sharing countries, such as Nepal, Myanmar, Bhutan and Afghanistan, are very small as a share of India’s total foreign investment inflows.
The Indian Express last month reported that the Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) for India’s maiden bullet train project is set to arrive in Mumbai, marking a major step forward for the 21-km tunnel stretch of the Mumbai-Ahmedabad High Speed Rail (MAHSR) project.
The long-awaited machine, designed to excavate tunnels, is required to complete the tunnel in Mumbai for the project. The 3,000-tonne machine is supplied by German company Herrenknecht.
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The availability of the machine had been a concern for Delhi because China was blocking its export to India.
In 2024, Goyal had confronted a German minister regarding the blocking of the machine. In a video of an interaction between Goyal and Germany’s Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck during a Metro train ride in Delhi, the Commerce Minister was heard telling Habeck that India was to get some TBMs from Herrenknecht that the company was making in China, but China was not allowing the sale of those machines to India.
A spokesperson for Herrenknecht later told The Indian Express, “For several months now, we have been observing extraordinary circumstances in the customs clearance processes for machines to be delivered from China to India. These are hindering us from fulfilling our delivery obligations as expected and, in some cases, entirely.”
