India-China trade set to cross $100 bn in 2019

Beijing: India has further liberalised e-visa rules for Chinese businessmen as the bilateral trade is set to cross $100 billion this year, a senior Indian diplomat here said on Friday.

The India-China bilateral trade last year touched a historic high of $95.54 billion, according to the official data released by China early this year. The trade deficit in 2018, according to the data, climbed to $57.86 billion from $51.72 billion in 2017.

"We are glad that our bilateral trade will cross the significant mark of $100 billion this year," India's Deputy Ambassador in China Dr Acquino Vimal said while addressing an event on 'India-China business forum, exploring opportunities, enhancing cooperation' specially in the IT sector.

A large number of Chinese investors and Indian IT firms based in China attended the get-together organised by NASSCOM -- a trade association of Indian Information Technology (IT) and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry -- and the Indian embassy.

"Closer development partnership between India and China has been growing steadily for the last several years.

Since the last 20 years, the scale and profile of bilateral trade and investment between India and China has increased several folds. This has been further strengthened in April 2018, when Wuhan witnessed the first Informal Summit between our Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi and President Xi Jinping. This Summit has provided a fresh impetus to our growing bilateral engagement," Vimal said.

As a result, the number of visits by trade and investment delegations have increased and the comfort and trust levels have improved, he said.

"This is demonstrated in the increase in the number of visas we have been issuing in the last few months.

In order to ensure that such engagement is promoted and encouraged, I'm happy to inform that we have further liberalised visas for Chinese travellers to visit India by the introduction of 'electronic visa' facility," the Indian diplomat said.