EU wants India to remove hurdles hindering FIs

India is not only having increased growth but a few countries maintain such high growth, the officials told visiting Indian journalists.

‘‘Earlier, India was important in our economic relations, but China was more important,’’ they said adding ‘‘this has changed. India is now as important as China in developing trade and economic relations.’’

There has been general reduction in tariff and the UPA government has promised to bring them down further to the Asean level, they said, stressing the far-reaching tax reforms in the budget and introduction of VAT in states have improve the economic environment.

‘‘The economic reforms are moving. The License Raj is being gradually taken away. System of handling companies with heavy handedness is gradually disappearing,’’ they said praising the present government for pursuing reforms despite the compulsions of coalition politics.

European Union, however, underlined the need for huge investments in technology and infrastructure saying non-availability of power was seen by European companies as a major bottleneck in attracting investments, the official said. If India wants to attract large investments particularly in the infrastructure, they said there was need to remove red tape in bureaucracy.

‘‘The elements of reforms have not so far percolated down,’’ the official said.

Telecom has been one of the most dynamic market in India but what is regrettable is that it has taken 15 years since reforms started to reach the present level. ‘‘Pace is a problem in India,’’ the officials said.

‘‘There was a large amount of unpredictablilty. But now the government is positive. India is now a country with enormous potential. There is some predictability in the direction of the economy,’’ they said.

EU is still the largest importer of goods and services and it was still India’s largest trading partner, they said. However, EU wanted India to reduce high tariffs in some of the sectors like textiles to allow imports from Europe. — PTI