Business & Economy

India Rejects US Trade Deal Push at Davos: IT Minister

India and the US have been engaged in protracted talks to finalise a Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA), but the negotiations have now entered their second year, with no date yet finalised for the signing of the pact.
Sputnik
India's Information and Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Tuesday ruled out the finalisation of a trade pact with the United States.

"The format of Davos is a format where we generally do panels and bilaterals. The trade meetings take place according to the country's own schedules and negotiations. They are deeply engaged with all the major economies on practically all fronts at this point in time. This is not the forum in which we meet delegation to delegation," he said at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos.

Vaishnaw also slammed the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for placing India in the second tier of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) race.

While the IMF believes that India is behind the US and China in AI preparedness, the nation is actually on track to invest over $150 billion in building associated infrastructure, including data centres, semiconductors and compute capacity, highlighting India's growing stature in this vital segment.

"I don't know what the IMF criteria is but Stanford places India at third (position) in the world for AI preparedness. I don’t think your classification is correct," Vaishnaw stated.

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