India, Belgium should collaborate on lab-grown diamonds: Piyush Goyal

Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal urged India and Belgium to collaborate on lab-grown diamonds, focusing on technology and certification. He also highlighted cooperation in semiconductors, green hydrogen, ports, defence and advanced manufacturing while discussing the India-EU FTA and global trade

Mumbai: Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal on Friday suggested India and Belgium should work together on the lab-grown diamonds front. Speaking at a high-level dialogue on the India-European Union Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in the presence of visiting Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever, Goyal said the two countries need to work on technology and certification aspects of lab-grown diamonds.

Outlining gems and jewellery as the top area where the two economies complement each other, Goyal said, “Let us co-create, design, maybe lab-grown diamonds would be a new area we should look at working together in.” The initiative can be anchored in Antwerp, a major marketplace for rough diamonds, and in Mumbai and Surat, Indian cities at the forefront of diamond polishing.

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Earlier in the day, Wever inaugurated a Belgian diamond grading company HRD Antwerp’s expanded facility at the Bharat Diamond Bourse, which will increase research capacity by 30 per cent, as per an official statement.

The visiting PM said while the India-EU FTA signed in January this year will scrap or reduce tariffs on 95 per cent of Indian and European goods exports, there is a case for going down to zero as well, certainly in the case of diamonds.

Speaking about the pact, the visiting PM said, “It is an expression of strategic openness. It is an expression of the willingness to trust. It is the proof of mutual respect. It makes our economies resilient against disruption and against coercion.” “Our cooperation is directed towards an international order that is more stable, more prosperous and better in balance,” he said.

Without taking any names, Wever flagged the growing number of people who want barriers to go up, who formulate policies arbitrarily without any economic logic.

“More and more voices today are calling for barriers to go up, for markets to be shut off, for tariffs to be imposed. Some do this entirely arbitrarily. They decide something on Monday, they revoke it on Wednesday, they reinstall it on Saturday,” he said to loud applause.

“In doing so, they inflict serious economic damage on their trading partners in order to make them dependent, to turn them into vassals,” he said, adding that protectionism and unfair competition put our world economy and our geopolitical stability under pressure.

When asked about progress on the free trade agreement with the US, Goyal reiterated the issues of preferential access for Indian exports and tariffs lower than those of India’s competitors.

“It (tariff) should be lower than all our competitor countries, as was agreed between the two countries before the Supreme Court of the U.S. struck down their tariffs. We are in agreement on this issue and are in continuous dialogue,” he said, making it clear that there is no deadline for signing the pact that India is working on.

Meanwhile, Goyal said other sectors where India and Belgium complement each other include semiconductors, where the European country’s strength in microelectronics can pair up with India’s scale.

Similarly, the two countries can work on green hydrogen and ports, where the fuel of the future produced in India can drive operations, and also in defence and advanced manufacturing.

Wever also promised that the new Belgian ambassador to New Delhi will be getting a 5 kg cake made of the country’s famed chocolate and hoped for it to reach the destination without melting, unlike its fate on the current trip where it broke into two and could not be gifted.