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Beijing, Jan.19 (ANI): China on Tuesday said that it wanted to boost trade cooperation with India and there was a need for both the countries to strengthen economic cooperation in order to accelerate recovery from the global economic crisis.

Addressing a news conference, Chinese Commerce Minister Chen Deming said that the two countries should strengthen economic cooperation and bring a new phase of economic and trade cooperation.

“The complete recovery of the world’s economic crisis will be a slow and difficult procedure. Under these circumstances, China and India should further strengthen collaboration and continue forward with cooperation. We should also bring bilateral cooperation to the next level and initiate a new phase of economic and trade cooperation,” Chen said.

Chen raised the issue of India’s tight control over work visas issued to Chinese nationals, a situation which he said had recently improved.

“We have discussed the issue and both sides have a common view on it. We do feel that India is tightly controlling the issuance of visas to Chinese engineers. We had already brought up the issue some time ago. We would like to thank the Indian embassy in China for their efforts and the situation has now improved greatly,” said Chen.

However, the visiting Indian Union Commerce and Trade Anand Sharma, on this occasion, said that India’s domestic product growth would accelerate in 2010 from 2009 and called for greater access for Indian goods in China in the face of a widening bilateral trade gap.

China is India’s second largest trading partner and bilateral trade between the giants has grown rapidly.

Sharma said that he hoped to see bilateral trade reaching the goal set for 2010 of 60 billion U.S. dollars.

“We have discussed this in today’s meeting and I still remain optimistic that since both of the countries are registering strong growth and our exports have moved to positive territory, we should be able to keep the target which was set to 2010 and do everything that is required to meet it,” said Sharma

Sharma, however, asked China to allow Indian goods more access to the Chinese market and for more direct Chinese investment in India, especially in infrastructure. He also pointed out that several Indian firms are already present in China.

“For the Indian exports to increase, we have discussed particularly the sectors where India has competitive advantages and strengths and we would like to see more value addition and diversification of the Indian export basket,” said Sharma. (ANI)