Union minister blames corporates for rising trade with China

New Delhi: Union Minister for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Thursday blamed the corporates for the rise in trade with China, amid the continuing tension at the LAC and a 17-months stand-off in Ladakh.

The minister said this on the sidelines of a an event in Delhi, when he was asked about the continuing high volume of trade between the two countries, despite the continuing tension at the LAC.

“I was an entrepreneur for many years it’s easier to change human behaviour than corporate behaviour. I will leave that out there for you to think about,” Chandrasekhar said.

The minister said the economic landscape was dominated by “4-5 groups” for long, and the economic landscape changed after the Narendra Modi government came to power, and new groups and start-ups have come up.

“What the prime minister did after 2014 changed the landscape of economic activities in India. Earlier we used to be dependent on four or five groups that drove the economy, now we have increasingly large piece of economy that is being driven by new entrepreneurs, new young minds, fresh minds who look at the Government with a healthy scepticism and there is battle for mutual respect but the economy is still dominated by the oldies if I can use that phrase and that will take sometime”.

“I don’t think this process of sort of delinking from China, especially by some of our corporates who have sort of heavily invested emotionally or whatever, is going to be so abrupt,” he said.

Chandrasekhar was answering questions after delivering a lecture on ‘Technology and National Security’ as a part of a memorial lecture series in honour of late Air Commodore Jasjit Singh.

The minister’s comments come as India- China trade continues to increase despite the continuing border tension.

According to the data from China, the bilateral trade between China and India grew 49.4 per cent during the January-September 2021 period to $90.38 billion from a year-ago during the same period.

It also comes amid calls for boycott of Chinese goods by several social and political groups.

UNI