India's offer is the best we've ever got: USTR

US team in Delhi for trade deal talks

- MUKESH JAGOTA

THE MUCH-AWAITED INDIAUS trade deal, which is key to resolving the standoff between the two counties after Washington's unilateral hiking of tariffs on Indian goods, may be around the corner. What seems to have come as a breakthrough in the protracted bilateral talks for the deal is the Indian government's decision to accommodate the US demand for greater access to its markets, with a higher degree of flexibility than it showed earlier, and include a few farm goods in the tariff lines to be relaxed.

United States Trade Representative (USTR) Jamieson Greer told a US Congressional committee that his country received an offer from India that was "the best we've ever received as a country," and that the Indian side had been "quite forward leaning." His remarks came as a team led by his deputy Rick Switzer is in India to take forward the dialogue.