New Delhi (NVI): India has been working on development partnerships with various countries and has started several initiatives, besides continuing its human-centric globalisation and welfare program with partnering countries, Rahul Chhabra, Secretary (Economic Relations), Ministry of External Affairs, said today.
Speaking at the curtain raiser of Diplomacy Unplugged, a dialogue series between India and partnering nations initiated by FICCI, Chhabra said, “We have been trying to finalise migration and mobility agreements with partnering countries. This pandemic threw up the issue of global shortage of trained manpower in various sectors that the MEA has taken note of.”
“We have also started getting the states involved in our outreach in terms of promoting exports and incoming foreign business delegation. Not just in terms of cooperative federalism, we are also looking at competitive federalism,” he added.
MEA has enhanced the trade promotion budget along with promoting study in India in various countries. “MEA has been providing funding for trade fairs and exhibitions and for number of targeted initiatives to Indian missions across regions,” said Chhabra.
The MEA Secretary said that after the India-Africa summit, the External Affairs Ministry had committed lines of credit of USD 6.5 billion, USD 700 million of grants and over 50,000 scholarships to African students that have already been given out.
During the virtual meet, Vincenzo de Luca, Ambassador of Italy to India said that both the countries are entering a new phase of relations between after the successful virtual bilateral summit between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Giuseppe Conte on November 5 last year.
“We were able to finalise a number of agreements not only on G2G, but also with the private sector. This only goes on to show how the two countries want to transform their partnership to ideally benefit from their economic, innovations and technological complementarity,” the Italian envoy said.
He said that the two countries signed many important agreements during the pandemic.
“This was also the first time that a new five-year plan of action had been decided to deepen cooperation in the domain of culture, innovation and technology with the Indian government. The comprehensive partnership between India and Italy helps the companies to be more confident about investment in the two countries,” he added.
President, FICCI, Uday Shankar said, “The whole world is trying to emerge economically, socially, and psychologically from the over-arching impact of pandemic, it is important that we engage formally and informally. The role of economic diplomacy assumes ever increasing importance in the current scenario.”
Shankar also noted that Italy has taken over the presidency of the G-20 this year and India is poised for the same in 2023. “This is a huge opportunity for both India and Italy, not only at diplomatic but also at B2B levels to enhance and take our relationship to greater heights.”
Furthermore, elaborating on the series, Devin Narang, senior FICCI executive committee member, said that Diplomacy Unplugged was a member-driven dialogue series, where we would virtually meet the Diplomats and High Commissioners of India’s key economic partners so that the Indian industry could explain the issues they face both in investments overseas and to also address problems that companies from foreign countries might face in India.
“This is a common platform that is aimed at increasing investments in India and its partnering countries,” he added.
-RJV/ARK
