India has to reply on Asia-Pacific for growth: Chinese daily

Beijing, June 26 (IANS) Relying on the Asia-Pacific region will best help boost India's economy, a leading Chinese daily has said.

"Since Narendra Modi, newly sworn-in Prime Minister of India, took office, the country's foreign policy has been moving eastward," an opinion piece headlined 'Openness can enliven New Delhi's trade' in the Global Times said.

"In the foreseeable future, India will enhance its economic and trade relations with its neighbours to the east," it added.

Stating that the Modi government has already set boosting the economy as the top priority, it said: "To achieve this goal, India has no other better choices than to rely on the Asia-Pacific region's economic dynamism."

Pointing out that as early as in 1991, the Indian government proposed the "Look East" policy, it said target zones were quite limited at that time, referring only to Southeast Asia.

"India has traditional advantages in its economic and trade relationship with Southeast Asia. Any tourist to the region will soon find that India's Buddhist culture has widespread and far-reaching influence there," the article by Ding Gang, a senior Chinese journalist, said.

"Personal exchanges between India and Southeast Asia are also quite frequent. Today, more than two million Indian immigrants are living in Southeast Asian countries."

Mentioning that India in recent years has been working to strengthen its economic and trade ties with ASEAN countries, it said, however, "India's moving eastward has not gone far or deep enough".

"ASEAN-India trade for 2012 was $76.4 billion. Both sides vowed to improve the bilateral trade volume to more than $100 billion by the year of 2015, and $200 billion by the year of 2020," the article stated.

"This number is not very notable compared with the trade volume between ASEAN and China. The ASEAN-China bilateral trade volume reached $400.1 billion in 2012, more than five times the ASEAN-India trade volume."

Stating that China's manufacturing strength has contributed to larger ASEAN-China trade, it at the same said that "the more important reason is that China's degree of openness to ASEAN is higher than India".

"India is one step behind China in participating in the integration of regional trade and economy," the writer stated.

"This lagging step affects the capability of the Indian economy in sharing the fruits of development of the regional economy."

But, it said, since the Modi government wanted to catch up by deepening reforms, it would to neighbouring countries, including China.

"As a regional power, India's openness will bring a ripple effect to the region. It will also stimulate China to put more efforts in its own opening up," is stated.