India and Poland set an ambitious trade target of USD 5 billion at the fourth session of the bilateral Joint Commission on Economic Cooperation, held in Warsaw on June 15. The commission, co-chaired by Mr Amitabh Kant, Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion and Mr Jerzy Pietreiwicz, Secretary of State, Ministry of Economy, drew a blueprint for stepping up investments and identified a series of actions to raise trade from the 2014 level of USD 2.3 billion, to USD 5 billion by the year 2018.

 Speaking at the plenary session, Secretary of State Pietriewicz noted that the economic partnership between the two countries was significantly boosted by the visit to India of Mr P, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy of Poland in January 2015 and his meeting with Indian Prime Minister Mr Narendra Modi.

 Mr Amitabh Kant described the dynamism of the Indian economy and invited Polish investors to look at various new programmes like Make in India and Smart Cities, and to take advantage of the significantly improved investment climate. He said India had become one of the most open economies in the world, with de-regulation and hikes in FDI limits in key sectors like defence, infrastructure and railways. Secretary Kant stressed the Government of India had created an enabling environment for foreign investors and was committed to provide hand-holding facilities to inbound investments.

 The three co-chairs of the newly created Joint Working Groups on Coal, IT and Food Processing, also presented the outcomes of their first meetings, held on the eve of the commission meeting. In the coal and steel sector, both sides have drawn a roadmap to strengthen cooperation in areas such as thick seam underground coal mining, exploitation of highly gassy seams, developing clean coal technologies and transfer of technologies in deep coal mining from Poland to India. In the food processing sector, experts discussed market access, food processing technologies and research and development between scientific institutions. The Polish side showed interest in exporting the latest food processing machinery and technology to India. In the IT and ICT sector, India and Poland have identified areas to strengthen cooperation in entrepreneurship development and support; research and development and innovation in cloud computing; big data analysis; cyber-security, data protection, smart cities projects and accreditation of each other’s courses.

Bilateral trade target to boost investment and sectoral cooperation, promoting FDI liberalisation and technology transfer. A bilateral economic cooperation framework was adopted to expand trade and investment, emphasising investor facilitation and FDI liberalisation while inviting investors to national initiatives such as Make in India and Smart Cities. Implementation occurs via Joint Working Groups on Coal, IT and Food Processing, with coal cooperation focused on deep-mining and clean-coal technology transfer, food processing on market access, machinery exports and R&D collaboration, and IT on entrepreneurship, cloud computing, big-data, cyber-security, data protection and smart-city project cooperation.