India, Norway to concentrate on trade, maritime pacts
2 November 2006
India, Norway To Concentrate On Trade, Maritime Pacts
(RTTNews) — After initiating talks with the EU for a trade agreement, India now started discussions with non-EU countries such as Norway to boost trade and investment flows.
The Scandinavian country is also discussing a maritime agreement with India, as part of outside the scope of the proposed India-EU bilateral trade and investment agreement.
Norwegian Minister for Trade and Industry, Dag Terje Andersen, said that the country is looking forward to a bilateral trade pact and a maritime agreement with India and hope to materialize in both these areas in the next few months. Andersen, who is here as part of the Norwegian delegation led by Crown Prince Haakon, said the two countries are also engaged in shipping, adding that presently more than 30 ships were being built in India on orders by Norwegian companies.
Prince Haakon said the two countries could cooperate in various sectors such as energy, services, marine and tourism as well to enhance bilateral relationship.
In addition to the trade pact with EU, Commerce Minister, Kamal Nath, said that India had some preliminary discussions with a few members of the European Free Trade Association. He added these bilateral and regional trading arrangements were not contradictory to the multilateral system under the WTO, but were only building blocks.
