He asked businesses to identify areas of trade where the two sides can help each other in crossing the Rubicon of regulation. “Indian businesses are foxed navigating between the EU regulations and individual regulations in member countries,” Goyal said while addressing businesses of India and France.
The minister said that the level of trade and investments between the two countries needs to be enhanced, as the current figures does not reflect their true potential. “We’ve already got a lot of exchange between the two countries on banking and insurance. We could look at seeing how that could be taken to the next level,” he said.
India-France bilateral goods trade in 2024-25 totalled $15.3 billion.
“We could look at global capability centres, and we have a fair bit coming in from all across the world to India, to leverage the huge pool of talent and skill there,” Goyal said.
He also suggested setting up working groups between businesses of India and France and expanding the frontiers of knowledge and engagement in the emerging area of artificial intelligence.India and the EU are working to accept each other’s sensitivities and come out with a fair, equitable and balanced free trade agreement which respects the domestic situation on both sides.Goyal said the aim is also to remove some of the roadblocks, reduce the compliance burden on both sides, make it easier to engage and expand businesses, and have a rapid response mechanism that works to create mutual recognition agreements.
Content Source: economictimes.indiatimes.com