New Delhi: With targeted $ 10 billion Indo-Chinese bilateral trade well within reach by 2004, Indian IT industry should look for a bigger market share in China, Commerce Minister Arun Jaitley said on October 19.

The Minister exuded confidence that the target of $ 10 billion fixed by the Prime Ministers of the two countries during the recent visit of Atal Behari Vajpayee to China appeared well within the reach going by the performance in the first eight months of the year.

The bilateral trade was $ 3 billion in 2001, $ 4.9 billion in 2002 and in the first eight months of 2003 it has almost reached $ 5 billion, Jaitley, on his return from China where he inaugurated the "Made in India" show, said.

"A major part of Indian exports to China were steel, cotton yarn, pharmaceuticals and auto parts. But we should expand this further to the IT sector," he said.

Jaitley, during his visit, met Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi and both explored various possibilities to further strengthen the trade ties between the two countries and ways and means to remove non-trade barriers.

"We agreed for mutual exchange of information on all issues and hold dialogues at all levels for the removal of non-trade barriers which is coming in the way of the growth of bilateral trade between two of world's biggest countries," he said.

PTI