Industry honchos from both European Union and India met on Friday to evolve a strategy to double bilateral merchandise trade to $200 billion by 2013 from $107 billion this year.

A brainstorming session was held on the sidelines of India–EU summit level talks and the proposed Bilateral Investment and Trade Agreement that is likely to be concluded later this year.

The 27-member Europen Union is India’s largest trading partner with over 17 per cent share in India’s total exports as well as the largest source of foreign direct investment. India is the eighth largest trading partner for EU.

According to Karel De Gucht, European trade commissioner, the free trade agreement between India and EU will help India sustain growth and secure jobs in the future. “EU needs to reinforce confidence in its economy by streamlining fiscal and monetary consolidations,” he said while addressing the India-EU CEOs’ forum, jointly held by CII and Ficci.

CII head Chandrajit Banerjee, Ficci chief RV Kanoria, Naina Lal Kidwai of HSBC, Deepak Puri of Moser Baer, Vishnu Mathur of Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers and Rakesh Kulshreshtha of Steel Authority of India (SAIL) were prominent among the Indian delegation.

The European Union side was represented by 30-member delegation comprising of Magdalena Alvarez Arza of European Investment Bank, Gavin Hewitt of European Spirits Organisation, Devashish Dasgupta of Diageo, Ivan Hodac of European Automobile Manufacturers Association and Rajiv Bawa of Telenor. Despite 14 rounds of negotiations the free trade agreement between India and EU seems to be still stuck.

“We’ve tabled the difficulties on cars, car parts, wines and spirits. There are problems on visa and both sides are looking at opportunities in the services sectors, including banking, insurance, retail, legal and healthcare,” Philippe de Buck, director general, BusinessEurope added.