India, China vows to expand economic cooperation

Indian and Chinese officials Monday expressed hope that India and China can intensify bilateral cooperation to enhance each other's economic development amid lingering world's economic recession.

At the Second Meeting of India-China Strategic Economic Dialogue held in the Indian capital, Zhang Ping, Chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission of China, said the two countries should expand communication and coordination of their macro-economic policies, learn from each other's 12th five-year plan of economic development, seek cooperation in basic economic structure, encourage investment in each other's country,and look for green economic cooperation.

Stressing that the two countries have huge potentials of cooperation, he regretted that the bilateral investment amounts to less than 2.3 billion U.S. dollars.

"However, this also shows how great is the potential for the economic cooperation potentials of our two countries, " he said.

Zhang said China welcomes Indian government's efforts to carry out economic reform, including opening retail sector to foreign direct investment (FDI), which he said would help India overcome negative impact from global economic woes with increasing variants of uncertainties..

He said the two countries are expanding the dialogue not only from communication of economic policy but to a platform of economic and trade cooperation.

Montek Singh Ahluwalia, vice chairman of the economic planning commission, said the India-China economic cooperation is still a new inventive with huge potentials. He said the two countries should overcome information deficit in economic fields and seek the most feasible cooperation in sectors such as water-recycling, digital science and micro-irrigation.

He said in the past decade and a half, India China trade volume rose 3 billion U.S. dollars to 74 billion U.S. dollars, largely driven by China's project exports to India, particularly in infrastructure sector.

Meanwhile, Chinese companies have taken significant share of Indian market in electronic hardware, white goods, construction machinery and power transmission, he said.

The first meeting of China-India strategic economic dialogue was held in September last year in Beijing. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh agreed to launch such dialogue in 2010.