Lot of excitement about policies of new Indian Govt: Froman

Washington, Jan 30: The US is excited about policies of the new Indian government and both countries are in talks to find out ways to increase investments, a top Obama administration official has said.

"As the (US) President noted while he was there, we think there is great potential to further to go from that 100 billion that currently exist to something much higher. There is a lot of excitement and interest in the kind of policies that the new government has expressed and India has expressed interest in," the US Trade Representative, Mike Froman told members of House Committee on Ways and Means during a Congressional hearing yesterday.

Froman was in India as part of the US delegation led by the President, Barack Obama. The key now is to -- through our dialogue with them to explore how those policies are going to be put in place and whether they're going to address the business environments in such a way as to increase trade investment," he said.

Froman who was in India in November to hold trade policy forum / meeting with India – the first one in four years said "We laid out an important series of work plans on intellectual property, on manufacturing, on services, and I'm following up with the government including during my recent visit there with the president to determine how best to take those issues forward".

Froman said the US is having talks on key issue of intellectual property rights. We have engaged with the new governments in India and we've engaged broadly because we have some common interests that we have Hollywood.

They have Bollywood. We have a common interest in seeing copyright rules, be strong around the world and be fully enforced, he said. We're working with the government of India has just put out a draft, intellectual property rights policy for public comment and we're providing comments along with, he added.

The US is hopeful to be able to engage with India in a constructive way, even in the pharmaceutical area to look at all the issues related to accessing and affording the medicines, Froman said. "We want to look at this holistically in an effort to try and move that agenda forward," he added.

PTI