Imbalance in favour of China in bilateral trade worries India

The government of India is looking at ways to restrict imports of Xiaomi mobile phones and several other consumer goods from China through standards and safeguards, according to a report available on the website of Economic Times of India.
The report, New Delhi-datelined, highlighted India's concern over its imbalance in bilateral trade with China, stating that the government "has not been able to extract a concrete plan from the country to address the heavily imbalanced trade".
Quoting the Indian officials, the government of India, the report said, is also looking to substitute essential imports like power and telecom equipment imported from China over the next decade through goods produced at home to spur domestic manufacturing as well as address security concerns over imported instruments.
China's Xiaomi mobile phones have been "climbing up the popularity charts in India.
The report noted: "An import management strategy is being worked out to check imports flooding the Indian market. The trade deficit will become India looking at ways to restrict import of Chinese good sunsustainable this way."
According to the report, an Indian government official said India has been forced to look at remedial measures such as anti-dumping safeguards and countervailing  duties to curb such imports since China does not seem keen to bridge the widening gap.
"In order to frame this strategy, the government has looked at 1,500 product imports from China worth $2.5 million (about Rs 15 crore) and above over the past few years that include mobile phones, laptops, CDs, CD covers, ceramics, auto seat covers, etc. It has emerged that a quarter of the total imports from China in the past two years have been just electronics and consumer goods, which the government   believes India can produce locally" it added.
Of the $12.5 billion (about Rs 78,000 crore) worth of consumer imports in the past two years each, mobiles phones alone account for $5.0 billion (about Rs 31,000 crore) worth of imports and this segment has seen a surge in imports in the past three-four years, the report stated, quoting further an Indian government official.
Meanwhile, trade analysts and businesses in Dhaka, while expressing their views on the report, told the FE that Bangladesh had likewise been venting its worries over the long-persisting imbalance against it in its bilateral trade with India.
"India has not been willing to do the needful for addressing meaningfully the Bangladesh's concern about imbalanced trade between the two countries," Dr Toufiq Ali, a former Bangladesh Ambassador to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) told the FE.
"Bangladesh, being a low-income country, deserves a better deal, in terms of trade-augmenting and trade-facilitatory measures, from India. Sustainability of expanded bilateral trade and investment-related activities and deepening of economic cooperation are well-nigh impossible as long as the status quo about heavily imbalanced trade between the two countries prevails," said another trade analyst in Dhaka, on condition of anonymity.
"India is concerned over import imbalance with China. But New Delhi does not seem to be at all concerned, when the imbalance favours it, as is the case with Indo-Bangladesh bilateral trade", Dr. Ali commented.
Business circles in Dhaka find a 'discordant' approach on India's part to trade-related matters at the bilateral level, likening it to "head I win, tail you lose" situation.
When the attention of one of the former leaders of a Dhaka-based chamber body was drawn to the piece of report under mention, he noted that India had been "telling us not to look the trade imbalance issue from a bilateral angle but to consider it from a wider one of our global trade imbalance".
The former business leader, who also preferred anonymity, wondered why New Delhi "is not taking the same stance, as it has been suggesting to us, on its bilateral trade imbalance that is now in favour of Beijing".