New Delhi: US Vice-President Joe Biden, who is currently on a four-day official visit to India, is expected to hold talks with Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh on Tuesday to boost diplomatic and economic ties between the two nations.
Interestingly, Biden is the first US vice-president to visit India in three decades. He visited New Delhi in 2008 as a senator.
Biden’s four-day visit is viewed as a major step in promoting President Barack Obama’s focus on forging strong partnerships in the Asia-Pacific region aimed at counterbalancing China’s power.
During today’s formal talks, Biden and PM Singh will focus on ways to expand bilateral trade that currently stands at $100 billion, officials said.
The two leaders are expected to discuss hurdles to trade and restrictions on American companies doing business in the Indian marketplace.
In a speech in Washington on Thursday, Biden noted that trade between the countries had increased five-fold over the past 13 years, but there was no reason it should not expand five times as much again.
Despite the increasing trade, US business groups have complained about the slow pace of economic reform in India and have urged New Delhi to open up its markets further. The Indian government in recent months has loosened rules governing foreign investment in some areas of the economy.
American businesses have been pressuring the Obama administration to press India for stronger intellectual property protection. New Delhi is expected to raise concerns about proposals in the US Congress that would curb visas for high-tech Indian workers.
India and the United States will also discuss regional security, including efforts to end the conflict in Afghanistan.
Biden will also travel to the country’s financial capital, Mumbai, to meet business leaders and deliver a speech on the economy.
Trade between two countries has grown from $9bn (£5.9) in 1995 to nearly $100bn this year.
Biden, accompanied by his wife Jill, arrived in New Delhi on Monday evening.
He went immediately to visit a museum dedicated to Mahatma Gandhi, writing in the visitors’ book that it was an “honour and great privilege” to see a place “memorialising one man who changed the world”.
–PTI