India to announce duty free import

By Groum Abate (Capital)
India is likely to announce duty free import of selected items from African countries at its first-ever summit with 14 African countries in April. The April 8 summit will come out with an action plan for reinvigorating India-Africa ties and a political declaration that will encapsulate broad directions of this partnership in the 21st century. The action plan will include a broad spectrum of areas, including trade, investment, education, agriculture, mining, infrastructure and culture. It is said that the Indian government is working on a package of duty concessions that may cover some agricultural items for least developed countries of Africa.
Total trade with Africa for 2006-07 was estimated at around 20 billion dollars with exports to Africa growing by more than 180%. The duty-free and quota-free regime for certain African countries will be a big step to energize trade ties between India and Africa. Algeria, Burkina Faso, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Libya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Uganda and Zambia are among the countries to attend the summit. The participating countries have been chosen by the African Union. The summit has been structured as a three-tier interaction between senior officials (April 4), foreign ministers (April 7) and 17 heads of states/government of the two sides (April 8) participating in this exercise. A gala multicultural concert and a multimedia show will kick off the summit and will provide a more contemporary character to their ties.
Although some see the move to have been inspired by a similar summit China held with African states, Indian officials are keen to distinguish their approach, of capacity building and empowerment towards Africa, as different from the trade-driven Chinese approach.
India sees its partnership with Africa as one of empowerment and meeting genuine African needs.
Nearly 15,000 African students study in India every year. “The summit will showcase the brand image of India in Africa. The continent has changed and so has India. The forum will be appropriate to give a new direction to the partnership between the two sides,” said an official. The summit will also be attended by heads of sub-regional groupings like the Southern African Development Community (SADC), Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the Economic Community for West African States (ECOWAS).
India’s help in setting up the Pan-Africa e-network that will electronically link 53 countries of Africa and bring them benefits of tele-education and tele-medicine, highlights the new thrust of Indian diplomacy in Africa. India has also given generous lines of credit to assist the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and written off the debt owed by the African countries under the HIPC (Heavily Indebted Poor Countries) Paris Initiative. India has spent more than $1 billion on providing training to more than 1,000 officials from sub-Saharan Africa, under the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation Program (ITEC).