US President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi shake hands following their bilateral meeting in the Oval Office of the White House yesterday.
Agencies/Washington
President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi discussed trade issues, climate change and the fight against Islamic State militants during an Oval Office meeting yesterday, the two leaders told reporters after their meeting.
Modi said he sought Obama’s support for continued openness and ease of access for Indian services companies in the US market, and he said the two leaders had a candid discussion about a trade agreement reached in Bali last year.
“India supports trade facilitation. However, I also expect that we are able to find a solution that takes care of our concern on food security. I believe that it should be possible to do that,” Modi said.
Stockpiling and subsidies for the poor are considered trade-distorting under existing World Trade Organisation rules.
All 160 WTO members including India agreed to implement the trade facilitation agreement (TFA) - which would mark the first big global trade liberalisation deal in two decades - at a 2013 meeting in Bali. India’s move to hold up the deal in July surprised fellow WTO members.
The agreement was due to take effect in mid-2015.
On Monday the two leaders vowed to expand and deepen their countries’ strategic partnership and make it a model for the rest of the world.
Modi met Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and other key US officials at the White House for a private dinner, ahead of formal talks yesterday.
In a joint “vision statement” issued after their dinner meeting, the two leaders said they would work together “not just for the benefit of both our nations, but for the benefit of the world.”
They said their countries would co-operate on security and to fight terrorism and would back a “rules based” global order in which India assumes greater multilateral responsibility, including a reformed UN Security Council.
They also vowed to work together against the threat posed by climate change and to co-operate to address the consequences of unchecked pollution.
“We have a vision that the US and India will have a transformative relationship as trusted partners in the 21st century. Our partnership will be a model for the rest of the world,” they said in their statement.
The two leaders also said their countries would work to ensure that economic growth brought better livelihoods for all people and stressed the importance of open markets and fair and transparent practices to allow trade to flourish.
Washington has been keen to expand business and security ties with India, which it sees as a key counterbalance to an increasingly assertive China in Asia. Obama has backed New Delhi’s bid to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council.
However, the relationship has failed to live up to his declaration in 2010 that it would become “one of the defining partnerships of the 21st Century.”
Modi, who came to power in May, has received a warm welcome in the US, even though he was denied a visa in 2005 over rioting in his home state of Gujarat three years earlier that killed more than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims. Modi denies any wrongdoing and has been exonerated by a Supreme Court investigation.
He has maintained a frantic schedule since arriving in America on Friday, even though he is fasting in accordance with Hindu custom during the Navratri festival and drank only warm water at the White House.
As part of an effort to spur foreign investment, he met more than a dozen US corporate leaders early on Monday and told them he was committed to liberalising India’s economy, which has underperformed other emerging markets recently after years of breakneck growth.
On Saturday, Modi addressed the UN General Assembly and then appeared before some 60,000 people at a musical event in New York’s Central Park aimed at ending global poverty and bringing essentials such as sanitation to all.
On Sunday, he received a rapturous welcome from a big crowd of Indian-Americans in an appearance in New York’s Madison Square Garden arena.
External Affairs Ministry spokesman Syed Akbaruddin said the dinner meeting was “extremely convivial” and the two leaders found they had a common interest in technology and shared experience in that they were relative political outsiders before coming to power.
He said they agreed they “should focus on some big things they can achieve in a finite time period in the next few years.”
Modi sought suggestions from the US business leaders as to how the investment environment could be improved. When some complained about unpredictable taxes, he said he was “committed to a stable tax regime” as this was necessary to encourage investment, Akbaruddin said.
He said Modi had invited the US BlackRock investment management firm to stage a major conference in India early next year to bring in big investors from around the world. He said BlackRock had said the event could bring in as much as $6bn in investment.
Among those attending the breakfast meeting with Modi were the chief executives of Caterpillar Inc and Boeing Co.
Caterpillar chairman and CEO Doug Oberhelman said he had been impressed by Modi’s determination to revive the Indian economy. “I believed him. He was very serious,” he said.
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