BEIJING*: *While the bilateral trade between China and India reached a newlandmark, the trade deficit too continues to remain high at USD 51.75billion- registering a growth of 8.55 per cent year-on-year in 2017.
According to India’s trade figures, the deficit had crossed USD 52 billionlast year. India has been pressing China to open the IT and Pharmaceuticalsectors for Indian firms to reduce the massive trade deficit.
As per the Chinese trade data, India’s exports to China increased by 39.11per cent year-on-year to $ 16.34 billion last year. India’s imports fromChina increased by 14.59 per cent to $ 68.10 billion.
India has emerged as the seventh largest export destination for Chineseproducts, and the 24th largest exporter to China.
The India-China bilateral trade has reached $ 84.44 billion last year, anhistoric high notwithstanding bilateral tensions over a host of issuesincluding the Doklam standoff.
A rare novelty of the bilateral trade otherwise dominated by the Chineseexports was about 40 per cent increase of Indian exports to China in 2017totalling to $ 16.34 billion, data of the Chinese General Administration ofCustoms accessed by PTI here showed.
The bilateral trade in 2017 rose by 18.63 per cent year-on-year to reach $84.44 billion. It is regarded as a landmark as the volume of bilateraltrade for the first time touched $ 80 billion, well above the $ 71.18billion registered last year.
The trade touched historic high despite bilateral tensions over a number ofissues including the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, China blockingIndia’s efforts to bring about a UN ban on Jaish-e-Muhammad leader MasoodAzhar, Beijing blocking India’s entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group(NSG) as well as the longest military standoff at Doklam lasting 73 days.
The bilateral trade stagnated around $ 70 billion for several years despitethe leaders of both the countries setting $ 100 billion as target for 2015.
Though it is still about $ 20 billion short, officials on both sides expecttrade and Chinese investments in India to pick up further this year as boththe governments are trying to scale down tensions and step-up thenormalisation process.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to visit China in June this yearto take part in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit inQingdao. Reciprocal visits by Chinese leaders too were expected to takeplace this year.
There were also expectations that the new Commerce Minister of China to benamed later this week in government reshuffle was expected to visit Indiain the coming weeks for talks to improve bilateral trade.
Significantly, diamonds along with copper, iron ore, organic chemicals andcotton yarn contributed to the increase Indian exports to China.
India’s exports of diamonds grew 4.93 per cent totalling to $ 2.59 billion.India was the second largest exporter of diamonds to China with a marketshare of 33.06 per cent after South Africa.
Also, Indian exports of copper registered a significant increase of 115.78per cent to reach $ 2.15 billion.
India’s cotton including yarn and woven fabric exports to China showed anincrease of 1.86 per cent to reach $ 1.30 billion. India was the secondlargest exporter of cotton to China with 15.04 per cent market share lastyear.
India’s exports of Zinc to China showed a sharp increase of 802 per cent toreach $ 240 million.
China’s exports on the other hand were dominated by electrical machineryand equipment registering an increase of 28.23 percent to $ 21.77 billion.
India was the largest destination for China’s Fertilizers exportsregistering 16.98 per cent of its total Fertilizers worth $ 1.03 billion toIndia.
India was also the largest export destination for Chinese Antibiotics- withexports worth $ 783 million taking place in 2017.
Chinse exports were also led by organic chemicals, worth $ 6.56 billion in2017.