Expressing concern over the growing trade imbalance between the United States and India, outgoing US Ambassador to India Robert D Blackwill said on Wednesday that American exports to India have languished at low levels since 1997.

"While Indian products and services do increasingly well in the US market, American exports to India are low," Blackwill told a press conference in Mumbai.

"India is only our 25th largest trading partner while the US is India's single largest export market," Blackwill said adding that in 2002, bilateral trade totalled $15 billion, of which Indian exports to the US were $11.7 billion, three times more than US exports to India of $3.7 billion.

"We remain concerned about the growing trade imbalance -- especially the underlying market access asymmetries between our two economies," Blackwill noted.

He said to help build a more robust economic relationship US President George W Bush and Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee re-launched the US-India economic dialogue in November 2001.

"While in the past year, we have enjoyed modest success in implementing it, the June visit of Commerce Minister Arun Jaitley to Washington will be an important opportunity to advance this discourse," Blackwill said.

Jaitley is scheduled to have meetings with US trade representative Robert Zoellick and others in the administration on the full range of bilateral and multilateral economic issues, the US ambassador said.

Asked to comment on the concerns over Indian software professionals losing jobs in the US, Blackwill said the issue was being considered by only four states. However, a legislation preventing outsiders to secure jobs in US was yet to be passed, he said.

Blackwill said the greatest beneficiary of outsourcing to India were US consumers and citizens.

While pointing out that this could become a political issue, he downplayed the issue by saying that it was an inevitable fact of globalisation.