Former Prime Minister of India - Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee

PM's inaugural address at the Second India-Asean Business Summit

~It is a great pleasure to inaugurate the second India-ASEAN Business Summit here today. I extend a special welcome to the distinguished dignitaries and business delegates from ASEAN, who have taken the trouble to come to India on this occasion. I wish all of you a fruitful, pleasant and comfortable stay in India.

Last year, I had expressed the hope that this Business Summit could become a traditional curtain raiser for the annual India-ASEAN Summit of Heads of State and Government. It is gratifying that this event has had such a good response from ASEAN countries and is co-sponsored by our apex bodies of trade and industry.

Friends,

The past year has woven a number of important new strands into the fabric of the India-ASEAN partnership:

• We have launched new cooperation programmes in science & technology, transport and infrastructure, information technology, biotechnology and human resources development.
     
• Cooperative projects for the C.L.M.V. countries are under preparation or implementation under the India-ASEAN fund.

• We have also made remarkable progress towards a Framework Agreement on Comprehensive Economic Cooperation between India and ASEAN. Just yesterday, our Economic Ministers reached agreement on the text to be signed at the Bali Summit. India has offered to negotiate an Early Harvest Programme, identifying fast track measures for economic cooperation and trade promotion. In this category, we have also offered unilateral tariff concessions to the C.L.M.V. countries.

To corporate India, let me say that such efforts are a major vote of confidence in the new strength, resilience and global competitiveness of Indian industry.

India's sub-regional and bilateral cooperation with ASEAN countries are also reinforcing strands.

BIMST-EC provides a valuable link between South Asia and our two close neighbours in Southeast Asia. We are working towards a Free Trade Arrangement within this organization, which will meet at the summit level early next year to give a decisive impetus to our cooperation.

The Mekong-Ganga Cooperation provides a framework for closer cultural and people-to-people links between the people of the ancient lands bound by these two great Asian rivers, which have created rich and majestic civilizations.

There have been new initiatives in trade and investment linkages with Singapore and Thailand; and new bilateral programmes with Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.

Friends,

Your meetings here offer a unique opportunity for Indian and ASEAN business leaders to expand existing relationships, forge new partnerships, and identify new areas of collaboration by creating new synergies. The vast natural resources, vibrant markets, diverse technologies and human talents of India and ASEAN can be mobilized for greater mutual benefit. Your interaction should seek to flesh out these opportunities and provide inputs to the Bali summit, which can guide the joint economic decisions of our governments.

With this perspective, I would like to share with you a few thoughts on India-ASEAN complementarities.

Trade and investment are the basic building blocks of the India-ASEAN relationship. India-ASEAN trade now exceeds 10 billion dollars, but it has barely scratched the surface of its potential. We must aim high, and target a turnover of 15 billion dollars over the next two years, and 30 billion dollars by 2007.

Companies from ASEAN countries are participating in India’s ambitious infrastructure development programme. We have a priority programme for a vast network of highways throughout India. We welcome investment and technological inputs in the modernization and expansion of our major airports and ports. India has committed 12.5 billion dollars in this fiscal year alone for development of national highways, airports, ports and convention centres. There are obvious opportunities for ASEAN in these infrastructure projects.

India’s telecom sector is rapidly expanding. We are carrying out major reforms in the power sector. Some ASEAN businesses have already availed of these opportunities.

India can share with ASEAN its expertise in space technology for developmental applications, like natural resources mapping, flood forecasting and hydrology. We can expand this cooperation to the manufacture and launch of remote sensing and communication satellites. India has built and launched a number of satellites, both for itself and for other countries. We can offer this service to ASEAN countries, at considerably less cost than what they incur at present.

As I had mentioned to ASEAN leaders at our first Summit in Cambodia, the strength of the India-ASEAN investment linkages is in their two-way flows. Indian companies have invested in textiles, chemicals, pharmaceuticals and agro-industries in Southeast Asian countries. More recently, we have invested in Vietnam and Myanmar in oil and gas equity.

We are now promoting greater Indian investment in ASEAN to benefit from the ASEAN Free Trade Area and to access other Asia-Pacific markets. Indian companies are also looking for more opportunities in the energy sector, both for exploration and for retailing petroleum and petroleum products.

We should invest more among ourselves, without compromising on international standards of safety and efficiency. We also need to find new sources of financing both to reduce costs of our investments and to supplement our savings and foreign exchange reserves. The ~Asian Bonds~ initiative of the Prime Minister of Thailand is therefore a timely initiative, which India has supported. We have pledged a contribution of 1 billion dollars to the Fund. If widely supported and wisely operated, this scheme can provide long term stability to our financial instruments, ensure better returns on our investments and fuel faster economic growth.

Friends,

Today’s Asia owes its economic resurgence largely to its strength in the knowledge-based industries. Asian scientists and experts have proved their worth all over the world. With a comparatively younger population base, Asia will have to take on an increasing proportion of future global research and development activity. We must prepare for it by developing the necessary infrastructure in the coming decades.

We have to convert more of our institutions into international centres of excellence. This is already happening to some extent. India’s IITs have received recognition throughout the world. Singapore has created such centres for biotechnology and various other sciences. Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand are also promoting centres of excellence in specific areas. We have to share our experiences to mutually reinforce these efforts.

Education, training and human resources development are the pillars for the future economic growth of Asia. It is in the commercial interest of business and industry to strengthen these pillars.

We need more effective partnership between governments and businesses in scientific research and commercialisation of new technologies. It is a fact of modern economics that moving up the value chain requires constant innovation and cutting edge research.

We recognize the successes of ASEAN countries in innovative lab-to-farm techniques for upgrading agro-products. Joint India-ASEAN efforts can multiply such examples of increasing profitability of commercial applications for specific market requirements. Our centres of academic and research excellence can therefore form a network of collaborative effort to benefit our economies.

Friends,

Globalisation and communications technologies have shrunk distances, but they have not made geography irrelevant. India and ASEAN are neighbours. We have not yet exploited this favourable geographical fact to full economic advantage. To do this, we must upgrade our transport linkages.

Work has started on a trilateral highway project linking Thailand, Myanmar and India. This highway could further link up with the existing road networks in ASEAN. Under the Mekong-Ganga Cooperation, we are also looking at a New Delhi to Hanoi rail link. We have to improve air connectivity with all major ASEAN cities. These projects, when realized, would provide affordable transport links for large-scale India-ASEAN interaction.

In the modern era, business is not only about exchanges of goods or investments. It is as much about services, which constitute an increasingly important share of our economies. We should focus much more on tourism, entertainment, media and culture. The collaborative potential of tourism and entertainment remains largely unexplored.

We need to promote an intermingling of the rich cultural traditions of Southeast Asia and India, which trace their origins to a common source. This would not only enrich our interaction, but also enable us to jointly project our cultural and civilizational achievements to the rest of the world.

Friends,

This Business Summit is being held on the eve of the Cancun Ministerial Review meeting on the WTO negotiations. All of us are painfully aware that the development dimension of the Doha Round is not receiving sufficient attention. We try to highlight the asymmetries and imbalances in the multilateral trade agreements, but keep getting side-tracked into non-trade related issues. We are finding that the Doha Agenda negotiations are a two-track process, with our concerns always on the slower track.

It is in the hands of ASEAN, India and other developing countries to arrest this trend. We have to insist that the multilateral trading regime takes into account the genuine concerns of the not-so-rich countries for the welfare and livelihood of billions of their citizens.

Agriculture is one such issue that affects not just the economics, but also the society and politics of all our countries. With millions in our countries dependent on agriculture, we have a vital stake in achieving outcomes in conformity with the interests of our people. India and some ASEAN countries, together with a number of other countries, have taken some important initiatives, which should gain further momentum as we approach Cancun.

India and ASEAN also have common concerns on Singapore issues and on non-agricultural market access. We have recently put behind us the contentious issues of TRIPS and Public Health. We hope the same spirit permeates through other negotiations on the Doha Agenda. The issue of transfer of technology to the developing countries from the developed countries requires equal attention.

Friends,

In the sectors I have touched upon, there can be tremendous value-addition from the proactive participation of business and industry. Public-private partnerships are engines of growth and development in today’s globalising world. The India-ASEAN engagement can also profit from dynamic government-industry linkages. I hope your interactions and networking here will serve this larger cause.

Thank you.~