Bangkok hosts ASEAN-India Expo and Forum

BANGKOK, August 3 (TNA) - Regional delegations are gathering in Bangkok, where the ASEAN-India Expo and Forum are held during August 2-5, aimed to promote closer economic ties and cooperation between the immense Indian market and the growing 10-member ASEAN Community (AC). Thai Commerce Minister Apiradi Tantaporn said on Thursday that the ongoing ASEAN-India Expo and Forum, organized at the Queen Sirikit National Convention Center, paves the way for expanding trade, investment and tourism between India and ASEAN, in which Thailand is a member country. Apiradi acknowledged that bilateral trade between ASEAN and India stood at about 60 billion US dollars last year, when two-way trade between India and Thailand reached 7.7 billion US dollars. Apiradi projected further expanding bilateral trade between India, where there are over one billion consumers, and ASEAN, where there are over 600 million consumers totally. The Thai minister noted that India has considerably reduced trade barriers to more facilitate its external trade with ASEAN. In 2016, India was Thailand's 15th largest trading partner but the huge South Asian economy was the Thai economy's number one trading partner in Asia in the same year. Meanwhile, visiting Indian Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Nirmala Sitharaman announced that India is ready to further reduce trade barriers with ASEAN, expand the ASEAN-India Free Trade Agreement(AIFTA) to cover trade in services and investment and apply more information technology (IT) to support closer trade and investment connectivity with ASEAN. The visiting Indian minister expressed her belief that India could, thus, become an external trade hub of ASEAN in the future. (TNA)