The funniest news on the trade front that I have ever heard is this: The Manmohan Singh government has announced that imports from Africa will be allowed into India duty-free.
But suppose you were an importer: What would you want to import from Africa in order to resell here at a fat profit. Not much, I guess.
There are much fatter profits to be made by importing from Europe, the USA, Japan and South Korea. But our die-hard protectionists know that. Which is why this is basically political clientilism, and a hypocritical attitude to foreign trade. Note that the report says Indian foreign aid to these African countries will be more than doubled: from $2 billion now to over $5 billion.
That is our money going waste to finance a bogus foreign policy coupled with a stupid trade policy.
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