Build strong partnership

India and Asean must build a strong partnership and get their respective enterprises involved in the regional markets, High Commissioner Jawed Ashraf has told a business dialogue.

“We need to turn our attention East-ward more firmly. It is for us to bring together all the enterprises, institutions and organisations into a common purpose and a shared endeavor,” he said at the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between India and Singapore institutions on February 20, 2017.

The #Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) signed the Technology Partnership MoU with #International Enterprise (IE) Singapore and the #Singapore Business Federation (SBF).

Underlining the technology MoU, a first between Indian and Singapore business institutions, the High Commissioner called it “a step in the right direction and we must build a roadmap” for expanding businesses.

“We have even bigger task for CII, IE Singapore, SBF and others,” he said, calling for more MoUs with other chambers of commerce and industries as well as research & development and technology-based institutions.

These MoUs would “help build platforms to forge partnerships that connect our small enterprises and startups,” said Jawed Ashraf, calling on Indian enterprises to use Singapore as a gateway to the Asean markets of 600 million people.

He also called on Singapore-based business to develop greater course and greater sense of adventure to reach out to the Indian market of 1.3 billion.

The High Commissioner said a number of business programmes were being planned for this year including one conference with the Indian businesses community in Asean in Singapore later this year.

“Among others, we are going to work with SBF and do a conversation with Indian cities because urbanization is going to be our biggest challenge and biggest engine of our progress in the coming months,” he told some 300 business leaders from India and Singapore at the dialogue.

Commenting on the first technology MoU, signed yesterday, IE Singapore executive said more such partnership promoting events with India were expected in the coming months, especially from the educational institutions and universities.

“We expect such MoUs between other institutions, especially educational and universities,” said Benjamin Yap, group director for North and South Asia at IE Singapore, which promotes bilateral businesses between Singapore and international markets. fii-news.com