By Xinhua
Beijing : Chinese and Indian officials have made progress in joint exploration on the feasibility of initiating a regional trade arrangement, China’s ministry of commerce announced Thursday.
The two sides met in Beijing for a two-day consultation, which ended Wednesday, and reached a basic agreement on cargo and service trade, investment as well as trade and investment facilitating measures, said ministry spokesman Wang Xinpei.
The consultation was the fifth of its kind since March 2006, and the two countries planned to conclude the talks at the sixth consultation meeting to be held in New Delhi by October, Wang said.
The two sides would then decide whether to start free trade agreement (FTA) negotiations.
The first four months had seen trade between China and India surge by 56.8 percent year-on-year, the highest among all the major trade partners of the world’s fourth largest economy, to $11.4 billion, according to Chinese customs statistics.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh initiated the joint feasibility research in April 2005. New Delhi has hosted the consultations twice and Beijing three times.