India-US trade to be $60 bn by 2009: Kamal Nath

Washington, Jun 29: Highlighting India's ''healthy'' trade relations with the United States, Commerce Minister Kamal Nath expressed hope that the bilateral trade would double to over 60 billion dollars by 2009.

''The United States is India's largest trading partner, accounting for 16.8 per cent of the country's exports and 6.3 per cent of its imports in 2005, he told a press conference here yesterday, after a series of meetings with the US officials.

The two countries were adding a new content to their trade, along with the its growing volume, he said.

India was committed to the success of multilateral Doha Round of World Trade Negotiations, the Commerce Minister said.

''We want a strong multilateral trading system and are keen to push forward this process through whatever means necessary,'' he added.

In reply to a query, he denied the allegation that India had adopted an intransigent stance in the global trade talks and had, in the process, isolated itself.

When his attention was drawn to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's speech here on Wednesday, questioning the relevance of the Non-aligned Movement (NAM) of which India is a leading member, Mr Nath said, ''I don't know how the connection with the NAM exists.'' ''But, obviously, India is part of various groupings in the World Trade Organisation (WTO),'' the Minister said.

In the context of the global trade talks, he accused the United States of trying to enrich its flourishing farm sector at the cost of millions of extremely poor farmers in India and other developing countries.

Earlier, in a speech at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington-based think tank, he said, ''India has at least 500 million subsistence farmers and 300 million people living on less than one dollar a day.'' Mr Nath called for the Bush administration to embrace poor countries' interests in the Doha round.

Mr Nath, who met US Trade Representative (USTR) Susan Schwab and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, was scheduled to meet Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, and newly-appointed World Bank President Robert Zoellick before his departure for New Delhi.

UNI