Vajpayee to address India-EU business summit

Wednesday, 02 October 2002, 19:30 IST   |    2 Comments
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NEW DELHI: The third India-European Union (E.U.) Business Summit will take place in Copenhagen during Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee visit there next week to attend the India-E.U. summit. Both Vajpayee and Danish Prime Minister Andres Fogh Rasmussen, in his capacity as president of the E.U., will address the summit (October 8-9), a day before the political summit in Copenhagen. The summit will focus on issues for enhancing bilateral trade and investment in insurance and financial services, textiles, power and biotechnology applications, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), one of the organisers, stated in a press release Tuesday. Indian External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha, Danish Minister of Foreign Affairs Per Stig Moller and Errki Liikanen, commissioner of Enterprise and Information Society of European Commission will also address the business community. Industry bodies like the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), Confederation of Danish Industries (DI) and UNICE in collaboration with the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP), Ministry of Commerce and Industry are the other organizers of the summit. The E.U. is India's largest trading partner accounting for 23.37 per cent of Indian exports and 20.75 per cent of total Indian imports for the year 2000-01. The bilateral trade between India and E.U. has increased from euro 9.97 billion in 1991 to euro 25.03 billion in 2001, registering a growth rate of 150 percent. Both exports and imports roughly doubled during the same period. To be attended by over 300 Indian and European entrepreneurs and senior officials from the industry, the delegates would present their recommendations at the end of the summit, the release said. The first Indo-EU Business Summit, organised by CII at Lisbon in Portugal, attracted industry attention. The second summit, jointly organised by CII and FICCI at New Delhi in India, found telecommunications, information technology, manufacturing and food processing as key promising sectors. Industry representatives from both sides had come up with a set of 80 recommendations for enhancing trade and investment. Most of these recommendations have been implemented, the CII said.
Source: IANS
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