New Delhi, December 10
As Prime Minister Manmohan Singh reaches Kuala Lumpur tomorrow afternoon to attend the India-ASEAN Summit, the fourth since the annual event started in 2002, the two sides are going to bring to the table several new proposals for giving a filip to an already existing multi-faceted cooperation.
At the India-ASEAN Summit the leaders will review what has been achieved, come up with new ideas, and give the directives to the Ministers and the senior officials for follow-up action. Some new ideas will also be put forward for taking forward a multi-faceted cooperation.
The India-ASEAN summit brings together different strands of India’s ‘Look East’ policy which is acquiring a greater importance in India’s overall foreign policy. It also gives an opportunity for leaders of the region to meet at the highest level. India-ASEAN cooperation has strengthened over the years — reflected by the galloping trade between the two countries which is going to touch the $ 25 billion mark this fiscal.
After the Free Trade Agreement starts getting operational from January 2007, this figure is bound to get a quantum leap. However, India and ASEAN have agreed not to implement the Early Harvest Programme because there had been no agreement on the rules of origin. As a result, the two sides would move on straight to the main FTA.
In Bali two years ago, leaders of India and ASEAN had signed a framework agreement for comprehensive economic cooperation. One of the elements of that was a free trade agreement on which the two sides have been negotiating and the issue of rules of origin has been resolved. “We are now very hopeful that FTA negotiations would be completed shortly and that the FTA would come into effect within an year or so,” Mr Rajiv Sikri, Secretary (East) in the Ministry of External Affairs said at a briefing yesterday.
India has also set up entrepreneurship development centres in the new ASEAN member-States of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam. Air connectivity has dramatically improved in the last couple of years between ASEAN countries and India.
The two land masses are soon going to be connected by rail and road networks also. Plans are afoot to start a Delhi-to-Hanoi (Vietnam) train service in the coming years. RITES is already working on feasibility study for a rail link between India and Myanmar. Discussions are going on for a India-Myanmar-Thailand highway.
Contact between India and ASEAN at the highest political level has been intensified over the past few years. In just last one year, there have been visits to India by the President of Indonesia and South Korea, the Prime Ministers of Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, China, Japan, New Zealand. All these countries would be represented at the ASEAN Summit and the first-ever East Asia Summit in Kuala Lumpur.
