Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman, Minister of State (I/C) for Commerce and Industry, Government of India while addressing the Curtain Raiser for Global Exhibition on Services 2017 at New Delhi on 24th January 2017 said India’s knowledge driven service sector is extremely critical to the development trajectory of Indian economy. The digital platform for service delivery is an important step in achieving this and India should leverage the demographic dividend it enjoys.

The Minister emphasized on the introduction of Trade Facilitation in Services and India will soon submit TFA in services proposal at WTO to start discussions on trade facilitation agreement in services before the WTO ministerial meeting. She said that India has already floated the concept note for the same and is now “moving further towards a proposal”.

Earlier Smt. Rita Teaotia addressing the gathering stated that it is the services sector that constitutes a huge segment of the value added to GDP of the economy. The significant growth of FDI signals the increasing interest of Indian services, globally as she observed.

Smt. Teaotia stated that the Service sector will provide resilience to cushion the economy against cyclical economical risks that have been witnessed in the recent years. In addition, she also said that to maintain growth and quality in the Indian Service Sector it is important to align the sector to the world standards.

Earlier, while welcoming the guests Mr. Chandrajit Banerjee Director General CII said that the center of gravity of global growth has moved to Asia and India is regarded as the one with the highest potential, with the economy now on the fulcrum of a high growth trajectory. He said the landscape of the services sector in India is also going through significant transformation heralding a new paradigm of growth and development. He further said, that with services sector increasingly becoming vital for the economy, CII this year will be working very closely with each of the Indian states on their preparedness to enhance service exports vis-a-vis the states’ potential through a wide array of Advocacy and knowledge programs.

24 January 2017

New Delhi