NEW DELHI, May 12: Bilateral trade between India and China could reach $100 billion dollars in less than 10 years, a Chinese trade official said in a statement released on Friday.

“China and India have a history of increasing bilateral trade for the last 10 years,” Yu Ping, of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, told a meeting of Indian industry leaders.

“Now we are setting a new target of $100 billon that should be achieved by 2015,” said Ping, according to a statement from the Confederation of Indian Industries, which organised the meeting.

Trade between the former rivals has surged from $2 billion in 2000-01 up to $18 billion in the fiscal year ending March, Indian officials say.

With bilateral trade between the two Asian nations growing at 44 per cent a year for the last five years, China looks set to overtake the United States as India’s largest trading partner.

India’s trade with China will hit $20 billion by the end of this year, Ping said, only slightly behind India’s trade with the US at $21 billion.

But Ping said India would have to take some concrete steps, such as lifting trade barriers and opening its markets further, in order to reach the $100 billion mark, the statement said.

India has used anti-dumping measures on Chinese products in recent years, including duties of up to 108 per cent imposed this month on silk goods worth $180 million, the Press Trust of India reported this week.

Ping said the two countries should expand beyond trade in natural resources into new areas.

Chinese-made toys and electronic goods abound in India’s retail market while New Delhi has been shipping raw materials for Beijing’s booming construction sector.

India, which lags in the frenzied global race to secure fuel supplies to feed its burgeoning economy, signed a pact earlier this year with China to team up to bid for some oil and gas projects.—AFP