NEW DELHI - The United States and India are making "excellent" progress in talks on economic cooperation, Treasury Secretary John Snow said Wednesday as he pressed India to further open its banking and insurance industry to foreign investment.

Snow arrived Sunday on a five-day visit to review progress on economic cooperation since Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Bush met in Washington in July.

On Wednesday, Snow held talks with Montek Singh Ahluwalia, the deputy chairman of the government's main policy arm, the Planning Commission, and the co-chairman of the India-U.S. Economic Dialogue launched in 2001.

The slow-moving talks on economic cooperation, which got a new impetus from Bush-Singh meeting in July, have five components: finance and investment, commercial exchanges, trade policy, energy and environmental issues.

Ahluwalia said his talks with Snow focused on India's banking and insurance industry, funding for infrastructure projects and development of capital markets, but no commitments were made by either side.

The United States has been pushing India to further open its financial sector and Snow said India should increase the existing ceiling on foreign investment in insurance ventures from 26 percent to 49 percent.

Snow said a big increase in investments in power plants, roads and ports was crucial to sustaining India's economic growth, which has been expanding at a 6 percent rate the past decade.

But the plan to allow more foreign investment in insurance has been blocked by Indian communist parties, whose support is crucial to a parliamentary majority for India's coalition government.

"The government hasn't changed its mind on the desirability of doing that but it can't be done unless one gets a consensus in parliament," he said. "I think they appreciate that."

They were also expected to discuss currency security, prevention of money laundering and terror financing, India's Finance Ministry said in a statement Tuesday.

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