New Delhi, September 7:

India today sought greater market access to the European Union (EU) and expressed concern over excessive antidumping measures by its largest trading partner, even while inviting European businessmen to invest in the country.

Addressing the Sixth India-EU Business Summit here, India’s commerce minister Kamal Nath said some items of country’s exports like agro and marine products face market access problems because of excessive precautions in the EU. “This gives us the feeling that the goal posts will be ever changing as more sophisticated testing equipment become available,” he said, sharing the dais with European trade commissioner Peter Mandelson and British trade secretary Alan Johnson. The Indian trade minister said antidumping measures by EU was another area of concern, adding that significant proportion of India’s exports to the region faced such action, despite having a negligible share of global trade.

“A disproportionately large number of items in textiles, electronics, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, herbal remedies and steel sectors face such action,” he said adding that EU’s actions were neither rational nor fair. Underlining that India’s strength was in its demographic profile, Kamal Nath urged greater market access for Indian professionals in the EU. “Our young people are rearing to take up new challenges, and are ideally suited to fill the gap between the availability of skilled workforce and the numbers required to maintain current productivity and efficiency levels in Europe.” He said he was not speaking of immigration, but of services delivered remotely in this cyber-connected world of ours. India has demonstrated skills in the services sector.”

Kamal Nath also referred to concerns in the West about possible loss of jobs in Europe as a result of outsourcing of business processes to India and said the misconception should be removed from the minds of common people in Europe. The EU should look at outsourcing as business cooperation model that serves the interests of both sides and strengthens competitiveness, and not as something detracting from its own prosperity, he said.

Kamal Nath shared the view of Mandelson and Johnson that the current round of global trade talks must be conclude successfully at the Ministerial Meeting of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Hong King in December.

“Both India and EU share a common objective of strengthening the multilateral trading regime,” the minister said, “We expect the bouquet of results from the present WTO negotiations to provide developing countries with better opportunities to use trade for fulfilling their developmental goals.”

The British trade secretary said India had a major role to play in ensuring the success of WTO talks, not only as an important member of the multilateral trade body but also as a representative of the group of 20 developing nations. “Doha round cannot be a failure. There is too much at stake,” he said. Sharing similar sentiments, Mandelson said even as India and the EU did not necessarily share common interests at WTO, the discussions were moving forward for the Hong Kong meeting that is scheduled in 13 weeks.