New Delhi, May 12 : India and Canada have agreed to enhance cooperation for coordinated investment promotion and information exchange.

Union Commerce minister Piyush Goyal and Canadian Minister for International Trade Mary Ng concluded the negotiations for their respective countries. Ng announced that she would lead a Canadian trade mission to India in October.

This will present an opportunity to further the trade and investment ties between the two countries as she is likely to bring a big business delegation for the same. India-Canada bilateral trade in goods reached about $8.2 billion in 2022, registering about 25 per cent growth compared to 2021. The two ministers also underlined the contribution of the services sector in furthering the bilateral relationship and noted the significant potential for increasing bilateral services trade which stood at about $6.6 billion in 2022.

They emphasised on enhancing cooperation in sectors such as clean technologies for infrastructure development, critical minerals, electric vehicles and batteries, renewable energy and hydrogen, as well as Artificial Intelligence. Both the ministers asked their officials to discuss trade remedies issues of bilateral importance on a regular basis.

The two sides agreed to explore enhanced cooperation through measures such as coordinated investment promotion, information exchange and mutual support between the two parties in near future through a memorandum of understanding (MoU) preferably in Fall of 2023. The Ministers agreed on the importance of G2G coordination to promote critical mineral supply chain resiliency and committed to an annual dialogue at the official level on the margins of the Prospectors and Developers Association Conference (PDAC) in Toronto, to discuss issues of mutual interest.