India-China bilateral trade hits historic high of $84.44 b in 2017

The India-China bilateral trade has reached $84.44 billion last year, an historic high notwithstanding bilateral tensions over a host of issues including the Doklam standoff.

A rare novelty of the bilateral trade otherwise dominated by the Chinese exports was about 40% increase of Indian exports to China in 2017 totalling to $16.34 billion, data of the Chinese General Administration of Customs accessed by PTI here showed.

The bilateral trade in 2017 rose by 18.63% year-on-year to reach $84.44 billion. It is regarded as a landmark as the volume of bilateral trade for the first time touched $80 billion, well above the $71.18 billion registered last year.

The trade touched historic high despite bilateral tensions over a number of issues including the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, China blocking India's efforts to bring about a UN ban on Jaish-e-Muhammad leader Masood Azhar, Beijing blocking India's entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) as well as the longest military standoff at Doklam lasting 73 days.

The bilateral trade stagnated around $70 billion for several years despite the leaders of both the countries setting $100 billion as target for 2015.

Though it is still about $20 billion short, officials on both sides expect trade and Chinese investments in India to pick up further this year as both the governments are trying to scale down tensions and step-up the normalisation process.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to visit China in June this year to take part in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Qingdao. Reciprocal visits by Chinese leaders too were expected to take place this year.

There were also expectations that the new Commerce Minister of China to be named later this week in government reshuffle was expected to visit India in the coming weeks for talks to improve bilateral trade.

While the bilateral trade reached a new landmark, the trade deficit too continues to remain high at $51.75 billion- registering a growth of 8.55% year-on-year in 2017.