Mumbai: Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Monday has taken a cue from the temporary truce between the US and China over trade tariffs, as he advocated the need to lower trade barriers on Monday. “Trading across borders has become an economic imperative of our times and it is in every nation’s interest to bring down the trade barriers for the global economy,”
he said. “It is in the larger interest of every country to make sure that trade barriers are brought down to the extent possible,” he said. Jaitley said trade barriers have a significant impact on transactional costs for all transactions and any delay either due to lack of infrastructure or on account of terms and procedures adds to the cost thereby taking away the competitiveness of that trade.
“Domestic economy itself starts suffering and therefore it is in the larger interest of each economy globally to make sure that trading across customs, trade barriers of nations is facilitated to the largest extent possible,” He said countries have invested a lot in improving upon infrastructure including ports, airports and roads, and that India has been in the forefront of increasing its own capacities.
“This is reflected from the fact that in the last four years our ranking in World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business has moved from 142 to 77, a record movement of 65 position. On facilitating global trade, India’s rank has improved from 140 to 80 among 190 countries. “India remains committed as far as improvements in trade facilitations and facilitating trading across barriers is concerned,” he said. He also added India is investing heavily in infrastructure and using technology in best possible way to make sure solution is facilitated. “We are ready to cooperate with global best practices.”
