NEW DELHI: Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday said China’s non-tariff barriers were the biggest hurdle for Indian exports, alleging that Beijing had denied market access to Indian products despite significant demand potential, including for generic drugs, bovine meat and agricultural produce, contributing to a widening trade imbalance. She also called for a review of India’s trade agreement with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), saying its benefits were skewed in favour of the bloc.
“A decade has gone by consistently putting up a case for market access for Indian products but non-tariff barriers have been very strong and China uses non-tariff barriers unhesitatingly. Non-tariff barriers are the biggest hurdle in the trade between India and China,” she said during a conversation hosted by the Atlantic Council on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund-World Bank annual meetings in Bangkok.
India’s trade deficit with China more than doubled to $112 billion in FY26 from $52.7 billion in FY16. Sitharaman said New Delhi had repeatedly sought market access for products in which India had a competitive advantage, but progress had been limited despite scope for discussions on sanitary and phytosanitary measures and other regulatory issues.
Responding to Sitharaman’s remarks, China’s foreign ministry said Beijing was ready to work with New Delhi to address “each other’s economic and trade concerns in a balanced way and promote the steady development of bilateral relations”. “China never aims for trade surplus,” Chinese foreign ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning told media in Beijing, as reported by PTI.
Sitharaman’s comments come days after Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal said India was working to develop relations with China “once again”, while cautioning that the outcome remained uncertain.
“I think we had some concerns in the past. We are working to develop relations with China once again, but the last word has not been scripted on this journey,” he said on Wednesday at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum.
Sitharaman said India had refrained from adopting punitive trade measures to address its trade imbalance with China, preferring negotiations despite the difficulties involved, unlike some other countries. “Probably that’s not the way India believes in dealing with trade negotiations. We sit and talk. It is sometimes very tiresome but we do go through that approach rather than putting countervailing duties or some non-tariff barriers to counter their non-tariff barriers,” she said.
On the skew in trade benefits in favour of Asean, Sitharaman said India needed to reassess the impact of its trade agreement with the bloc, signed more than a decade ago, and refashion it to address the imbalance and its effects on domestic manufacturers and importers. “We need to have that agreement continue but in a slightly refashioned manner. It cannot so adversely affect one side which is the Indian side,” she said. India’s trade deficit with Asean countries crossed $50 billion in FY26.
Sitharaman also defended India’s decision to stay out of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), saying the government had not seen sufficient benefits in joining the trade framework. “We took a conscious call to stay out of RCEP because we didn’t think it was going to do any help for us,” she said.
Sitharaman said Indian exporters had turned global trade disruptions into opportunities by identifying alternative markets, including countries that had imposed high tariffs on Indian goods. Exports of goods and services grew 23 per cent in September, she said, citing the performance as evidence of exporters’ resilience amid a difficult global environment.
“Even in this situation Indian exporters have found very many different alternative markets — and even to markets which have literally levied huge tariffs on us — we have reached these markets and very efficiently,” she said.
India remained committed to multilateralism but was accelerating bilateral trade agreements rather than waiting for progress in the global trading system, the minister said. “We believe in multilateralism. However, given today’s environment we are very keen that we build our strength in trade through bilateral agreements as well.”
She cited India’s trade engagements with the European Union, New Zealand, Australia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as negotiations with Canada, saying political will on both sides had helped move long-pending talks forward.
On India-US trade negotiations, following recent comments by Goyal, Sitharaman said: “I hope in the interest of global trade and in the interest of trade between the two partners India and US the trade agreement gets concluded at the earliest.”
Source: Business Standard
