Segio Gor, US Ambassador to India, said Friday that Washington expects that a bilateral trade deal with India will be signed in the “next few weeks and months”. He indicated that only “1 per cent” of the deal was left to be concluded and Indian and US negotiators were working on it.

Describing US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s four-day visit to India which ended May 26 as “substantive”, Gor, speaking at the US-India TRUST Initiative event at IIT Delhi, said, “Just last week, India had sent a team to Washington DC to finalise the last 1 per cent of that trade deal. Next week we will welcome a US delegation here to continue those talks.”

“We fully expect that the trade deal will be signed over the next few weeks and months,” he said.

Randhir Jaiswal, spokesperson for the Ministry of External Affairs, made similar remarks Friday. “We had a trade team which visited the United States in the month of April… and now we are expecting a team from the United States to visit India next week, where negotiations will be taken forward. So far, we have had a positive and constructive engagement,” Jaiswal said.

Earlier, the Commerce Ministry had said that a high-level US trade delegation was scheduled to visit India from June 1-4 to iron out the remaining clauses of the proposed bilateral agreement.

Gor’s optimistic tone came after Rubio sought to repair ties with India, calling it a “strategic alliance between two countries that have global influence and the ability to influence global events”. Rubio also said that the two sides were “on the verge” of winding up a trade agreement that would be “sustainable” and “beneficial to both”.