New Delhi, Mar 19 (UNI) External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar today said that “de-dollarisation” is not a political issue, and India does not have a political agenda against the dollar, rather it is seen as a stabilisation issue for the global economy.
Amid US President Donald Trump’s threat to impose 100% tariffs on countries attempting to reduce their reliance on the US dollar, EAM Jaishankar, at the Raisina Young Fellows Alumni, giving India’s position on the issue of de-dollarisation said:
“De-dollarisation, this is not an ideological issue, it is not a national prestige issue, it’s a very practical economic issue. There are many countries today that are having problems trading, because they do not have access to hard currency.
“There are also concerns about the stability of the international economic order, and in which the most influential currency is obviously the dollar.
“So we have to ask ourselves a very sensible question, do you want to add to the stability or add to the instability in the world.
“So I am very clear, I want to add to the stability of the world at a time when the world economy is already under stress.
“So we have never seen this as a political issue, we have no political agenda against the dollar, we see this as a stabilisation issue for the global economy,” he added.
On India’s plans to hold a summit with African nations, he said:
“We intended to hold the next African summit, which was to be five years after the first one. Unfortunately we hit the Covid at that time, then we got into a very complicated conversation about Africa where there was a divergence of views on how exactly Africa should be engaging us. So we wanted our African partners to resolve it among themselves.
“We are very keen to hold a meeting. My expectation is in the not the very distant future you will see an India-Africa meeting, in some format which is obviously acceptable both to our African partners and to us.”
EAM Jaishankar, to a question, also said that India’s trade with ASEAN would go up if the 10-member bloc would “stop stalling” on review of the agreement on trade in goods.
“Is there an impediment with the Asean? Generally speaking no, physically speaking yes. The biggest impediment is that we are trying to build a highway through Myanmar, which will reach Thailand and go on to Vietnam. If we can actually build the highway, believe me it will be a game changer…
“So the land connectivity is a big challenge, we are working on that. To my mind it will require us to look at the Myanmar situation in a very different way if we have to progress with this particular initiative.
“Other than that, there are no impediments per se. We certainly think our trade and economic dealings will improve if the Asean were to stop stalling on the review of the AITIGA, the goods in trade agreement, where they have been walking it very, very slowly.
“But there could be a bigger ambition, we have a bigger ambition, we would like them to have one as well,” he added.
India has been pushing for review of the ASEAN-India Trade in Goods Agreement (AITIGA).
As recently as March 12, India and the Asean bloc held the 27th Senior Officials’ Meeting in Manila during which the two sides discussed early completion of review of the ASEAN-India Trade in Goods Agreement (AITIGA).
The AITIGA was signed in 2009. In September 2022, both sides tasked the AITIGA Joint Committee to undertake the review with the aim of making the agreement more trade enabling and mutually beneficial.
Subsequently, a total of eight sub-committees have been constituted to undertake negotiations on different policy areas related to the agreement.
India-ASEAN trade reportedly grew to US$131.58 billion in 2022–23
ASEAN is an important trade partner of India with about 11% share in India’s global trade.
Review of the ASEAN-India Trade in Goods Agreement (AITIGA) is expected to facilitate the expansion of trade between India and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in a "balanced and sustainable manner".
ASEAN comprises: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.
UNI RN