Will look into concerns over visa fee hike: US Commerce Secy

The US has assured India it will look into concerns related to visa fee hike while maintaining that the decision was not targeted against Indian professionals.The hike in charges for US H1-B and L-1 visa is not targeted at India, said US Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker in an interview with CNBC-TV18's Rituparna Bhuyan. He also spoke about the bilateral investment treaty, relationship between the two countries and how he sees the government's reform agenda.Edited excerpts from the interview.Q: Two years back President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi decided to have greater engagement in terms of investments, in terms of commercial ties. The strategic and commercial dialogue was launched just to achieve this purpose. What do you think will be needed to take this vision forward and what kind of areas of cooperation that you are looking at from the terms of commercial ties and investments going forward. What is your take on taking this relationship ahead in terms of investments in terms of greater trade?A: First of all, Prime Minister Modi and President Obama really challenged all of us to deepen and strengthen our economic relations and the strategic and commercial dialogue is really a great mechanism for us to be able to do that. Now one of my progressed accomplishment of secretary has been the ability to work with the Indian government to really deepen our economic ties.We have been working on a number of issues, so for example we are working on ease of doing business. Prime Minister Modi has committed to making it easier and simple to do business here in India and we are trying to help that whether it is around procurement or ease of implementation of the bankruptcy law.The second area of engagement is around smart cities. We have been engaged with a number of different cities across India to try and bring the benefits of technology that we have in United States (US) here in India and educate Indian leaders about what a smart city can be.We have also been working on infrastructure financing, a very important mechanism, municipal finance to be able to fund the billions of dollars of infrastructure needed here in India. Frankly, we have the same problem in United States.We have also worked on standards harmonisation, so in another word is standards can be harmonised that means our companies can develop products together. It means our small medium sized enterprises can become part of the global supply chain.So, we have a very robust agenda that we have been working on. We have also been focused on entrepreneurship and innovation. India is really interested in ramping up its innovative culture here, its entrepreneurial class and we have been working with the Indian government on that.We have adopted a few new work streams as of our meeting as today one on travel and tourism. There is so much greater potential in travel and tourism between our two countries and so we have focused on make 2017 a year of travel and tourism between our two countries.Finally, we are also focused on a sub-national engagement. In other words what I mean is if you are an investor and I come from the private sector originally you don’t invest in a country, you invest in a place. So, what we are interested in doing is having our governors and your chief ministers and our business leaders from both our countries have better engagement with what another just see the opportunities of foreign investment both in the United Stated and here in India.So, we have a very robust activity going on in the commercial side. All of that activity is very much is formed by our private sector leaders. We consciously have brought private sector leaders to the table to tell us what are the priorities that they see that will help our economies both the Indian and the United States economy grow. We call that commercial diplomacy, we have asked our leaders, our business leaders, Indian business leaders and Americans to set aside their own individual interest for their companies but instead to advise us what can we do to make it easier to grow trade between our two countries. Q: We saw that in the CEO’s forum which engaged in this before.A: Absolutely and that is where we married the CEO forum with the commercial track of the Strategic and Commercial Dialogue (S&CD) so that our commercial diplomats our business leaders are helping to inform the agenda between our two countries. So, the work we are doing actually has practical application and can lead to quick results by the business leaders.Q: You met several business leaders from India during your trip here. What was their message to you and in turn what was your message to them regarding India-US economic relationship?A: The messages are very optimistic. There is a lot of enthusiasm about the relationship. It starts with trust, one of the things by elevating the commercial dialogue to be equivalent to our military and strategic and diplomatic dialogue to work together on issues. There is a higher level of trust and engagement and that is allowing us to address issues on both sides for both countries and that to me is the most fundamental thing the ability to be able to speak frankly with one another about the issues and then be able to address them. So, I would say that was the basic message that we heard.My message to the leadership of the Government of India was a hearty congratulations on all the reforms that have been adopted over the last 18 months whether it is the insolvency and bankruptcy code or increasing caps on foreign direction investment (FDI) in a number of different sectors. Or it is beginning to address intellectual property protection or most recently your bipartisan passage of your Goods and Services Tax (GST).All of these reforms together are really changing the view of American investors of India and I spoke with a number of investors before I came here and they are extremely excited. They think this GST passage and obviously there is a lot that has to happen for implementation is it could be a potential game changer for India. Starting with Indian company so make it much easier to move goods and services throughout the country. Create greater certainty for Indian businesses first and it will also benefit foreign investors.