| Date: |
26-09-2014 |
| Subject: |
In US, Modi has his work cut out: sort out issues to get a partnership going |
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi left for the United States on Thursday, beginning a journey that was hailed as historic long before it began. And this visit, long after it is over, will be remembered for what it does to reverse a strategic partnership adrift since 2008.
Indian and US experts who spoke to The Indian Express agree there is plenty of low-hanging fruit that both sides can pluck with relative ease. The government has eased rules governing foreign direct investment in infrastructure, and the United States is hoping for a slice of the cake. Modi has promised to address concerns of American businesses over intellectual property rights, and may offer to reconsider his opposition to FDI in the retail sector.
He will, in turn, expect some concessions on a visa regime that Indian businesses in the US complain is too restrictive, and ask for taxes on short-term expatriate workers there to be lifted.
Experts say putting muscle into the economic relationship will need more substantial issues hammered out. India and the US hope to set a deadline to conclude negotiations for a Bilateral Investment Treaty, guaranteeing international minimum standards in the treatment of foreign investments. Negotiations, underway since 2008, have stalled over India’s insistence that its national courts have the last word, rather than the customary international mediators. New Delhi’s effective veto of the World Trade Organisation’s Trade Facilitation deal last month, said Alyssa Ayres, a former diplomat and now a scholar at the influential Centre for Foreign Relations, “pulled the rug out under those of us who were arguing for India to be pulled into the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, or for a Free Trade Agreement”.
Source : financialexpress.com
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