Boost Industries, Cut Imports: Ex-envoy.

AHMEDABAD: Highlighting untapped opportunities for country's economic growth, former Indian ambassador to China and UK, Nalin Surie called for reformation of policies of the country. Surie was delivering a lecture on the topic "India-China Relations: Compete or Engage?" at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) on Thursday.

"It is time that India should rethink on its national policies. India is exporting lots of raw materials to countries including China and importing back the finished products. Why cant we create facilities to convert these raw materials into finished products ourselves," said Surie. "For example if we are growing cotton, why are we just exporting cotton and then importing yarn and clothes later on? We must work towards exporting yarns and clothes instead of exporting the raw cotton," he said while speaking to the IIM-A community.

Even as he talked about various differences in the economic strategies and policies between India and China, Surie said that there are various areas in which the two countries could learn from each other. While the Chinese are increasingly focusing upon sustainability and domestic reliance with a strong focus on domestic demand, India is focusing on increasing exports to the international markets. Despite such differences in policies, there are various similarities that the two countries share. . "The issues of inadequate housing, rural-urban divide, and inadequate health facilities that plague India are also common to China," said Surie.

He said that despite the inevitable competition between the two countries, sharing of such socio-economic understandings between the two countries will be beneficial for both.

Alerting the audience about the fast growth in sectors like Information Technology (IT) in China, Surie said that they are strong in IT in their language at the moment. But they are growing so fast that would soon not only be dominating the English speaking countries but countries like Japan and Korea as well.

Source : timesofindia.indiatimes.com