Tenth India and United States Trade Policy Forum

The Trade Policy Forum meeting focuses on increased bilateral interaction and momentum on resolving trade concerns.

As part of the annual work plan jointly agreed between India and US, working groups on agriculture, trade in services and goods, promotion of investment in manufacturing and intellectual property, have been meeting to understand the best practices, facilitating investment and raising concerns relating to the trade.

Under TPF, there would be technical level discussions on October 18 between the two sides on issues concerning with agriculture, services and goods, IPR and manufacturing.

The technical discussions would be followed by Secretary and Dy. USTR level discussions on Oct 19.

Ministerial level meeting is scheduled for Oct 20, which will be led by Ambassador Michael Froman, United States Trade Representative from US side and Union Minister of Commerce and Industry, Nirmala Sitharaman, on the Indian side.

Both the sides will be reviewing the progress achieved on the issues agreed upon in work plans for 2016, under all the four work streams and would be working out the way forward for 2017.

The bilateral commercial ties between the United States and India are growing stronger as reflected by increased bilateral trade in Goods and Services of $109 billion and highest ever FDI inflows in 2015-16, the ministry said in its release.

The bilateral cooperation under TPF has resulted in resolving several market access issues and cooperation in services, manufacturing and IPR. India is looking forward to maintain the momentum further in the current TPF, the ministry said.

The ninth TPF was held in October, 2015 in Washington D.C, US.