Los Angeles, Sep 9 (Agency) Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal on Friday attended ministerial meeting of the India-Pacific Economic Forum (IPEF) in Los Angeles, an official statement said.Interacting with media on the side-lines of the meeting, he said India will take decisions on different aspects of the frameworks of IPEF based on its national interest.Goyal said there have been very useful engagements with the 14 members of the IPEF.He hoped that in a day’s time, IPEF would finalize a framework within which member nations could interact on different areas of mutual interest.Ahead of the meeting, Goyal met Australian Trade Minister Don Farrell, US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, US Trade Representative Ambassador Katherine Tai, Japanese Minister for Economy, Trade and Industry, Yasutoshi Nishimura and Vietnam’s minister of Industry & Trade Nguyen Hong.
Elaborating further on the discussions held with the US, Goyal said both nations believed that they need to have self-reliance as a core philosophy and have resilient supply chains between trusted partners who believe in transparent economies and rules-based trading systems.”US was very keen to work with India so that our dependence on other countries, particularly those nations where we have faced severe problems in the last two to three years can be reduced,” he said.To a query on market access issues, Goyal said an India-US Trade Policy Forum would soon be held during which both the countries would come up with more deliverables and newer areas of engagements.On digital economy, the minister said he had informed his counterparts in the US that India was looking to have very contemporary and modern laws in the digital space while maintaining high levels of data privacy, particularly of our citizens’ personal data.
In that spirit, India is working on a more robust framework to be presented to the Parliament soon and this has been much welcomed by the US and businesses in India, he said.”India is a big provider of technology services and we have a shared interest to have a very good understanding on the laws because we have a great interest in services export also,” he added.Referring to the series of meeting he had with US companies in India, Daavos, during the WTO meeting and in the Bay area, Goyal said these interactions gave him a sense of encouragement that US Companies are looking to expand hiring in India and to expand their research and development, technology support systems and back offices.