Demand was made to give opportunity to Indian companies in US government procurement: Official
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India has sought to allow its domestic companies to participate in the procurement process at the US government level which will help in increasing exports. A senior official gave this information on Saturday. India has raised with the US the issue of allowing Indian companies to participate in the US government procurement process. For this, India has requested the US to designate it as a Trade Agreement Act (TAA) compliant country. This issue came up for discussion during the 14th meeting of the India-US Trade Policy Forum (TPF) here on Friday. The meeting was co-chaired by US Trade Representative Katherine Tai and Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal.
According to the official, good progress was made at the TPF meeting on the proposed restoration of export benefits for some Indian goods under the US GSP (Generalized System of Preferences) programme. Progress was also seen on the initiation of formal discussions on designating India as a TAA-compliant country and on the issue of granting treaty status for visas. The official said, if you are part of the Trade Agreement Act then you are eligible to participate in the US government procurement system. We have started discussing this. Public procurement takes place on a large scale in America. We want to be part of that public procurement system.
If India is recognized as a TAA-compliant country, it will facilitate movement of goods in US public procurement. The official said, this will facilitate and increase our exports. However, this will be a bilateral arrangement and India will also have to give access to American companies in public procurement. On this the officer said, it is mutual. India will also have to give concessions to America. We are doing the same with Britain. We have asked the US side to prepare terms of reference. They will also evaluate our procurement system. However, India will protect its sectors and MSME units from these procurement systems under the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) schemes.
Another official said on the restoration of GSP that the American side has been very positive and they will have to approach the US Parliament (Congress) for this. The US Congress will decide on what conditions they will pass it, the official said. So, I think they are looking into this issue. The GSP program allows eligible developing countries to export duty-free goods to the United States. India wants its beneficiary status under the US GSP program to be restored. The Trump administration had taken away GSP status from India in the year 2019. Under GSP, about 1,900 Indian products from various sectors like chemicals and engineering were getting duty-free access to the US market.
Disclaimer: IndiaTheNews has not edited this news. This news has been published from PTI-language feed.
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