India Invites CLMV Countries to Join the International Solar Alliance: V Muraleedharan

India invited the CLMV countries of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam to join the International Solar Alliance as well as the Resilient Supply Chain Initiative by India. This was stated by Mr V Muraleedharan, Minister of State for External Affairs, Government of India while addressing the Inaugural Session of the 6th India – CLMV Business Conclave 2020: Building Bridges for Constructive Development here today. The Minister suggested this in light of the fact that the region and India were working closely together to develop renewable sources of energy as well as form partnerships to penetrate global value chains.

Highlighting India’s cooperation with the CLMV region, the Minister stated that right through the COVID-19 crisis, India provided medicines and medical supplies to the region. It has also trained medical personnel from the region under the I-TEC scheme. He mentioned that India seeks to enhance its cooperation and collaboration with the CLMV region in terms of developing a vaccine for COVID-19 and would be willing to share the vaccine as and when it is ready.

To promote cooperation with the CLMV countries, the Minister stated that a Project Development Fund for the CLMV region had been set up with a corpus of Rs. 500 crores to help incentivise Indian private sector companies to set up manufacturing facilities in the region. Lines of Credit have been extended by the Government of India to the Mekong region – of which the CLMV countries are a part. On the infrastructure front, the Minister mentioned that a number of initiatives were underway to promote connectivity with the region. These include the construction of the Trilateral Highway and the Kaladan Multimodal Transit-Transport Project.

H E Dr Than Myint, Minister of Commerce, Republic of the Union of Myanmar highlighted that while the bilateral trade between India and Myanmar had grown rapidly, it was still below potential and urgent steps needed to be taken to provide a boost to trade. He also mentioned that the two countries needed to cooperate more closely to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.

H E Ms Khemmani Pholsena, Minister of Industry and Commerce, Lao People’s Democratic Republic stated that India and the CLMV countries needed to work together to improve productivity in agriculture, promote infrastructure development within the region and improve the ease of doing business by promoting trade facilitation. She suggested that India and Lao PDR could cooperate more closely in areas such as IT, Renewable Energy, Drugs and Pharmaceuticals and infrastructure development.

H E Mr Chhuon Dara, Secretary of State, Ministry of Commerce, Kingdom of Cambodia was of the view that India and the CLMV countries needed to focus on improving trade facilitation, facilitating logistics and the creation of a single window clearance mechanism to help boost trade. He stated that India could cooperate with the CLMV countries in the E-commerce and Digital Economy fields as well as help promote regional energy connectivity.

Dr. Guruprasad Mohapatra, Secretary, Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India highlighted the need to promote connectivity with the region and mentioned that the rail networks of the entire region could be knotted together to help promote tourism especially in terms of the Buddhist circuit. He mentioned that several projects had been taken up by the Government of India including the setting up of an Integrated Checkpost at Moreh and the Trilateral Highway.

Mr. Uday Kotak, President, CII, stated that Indian Industry should look at setting up manufacturing facilities in the CLMV region and take advantage of the bilateral and multilateral trade pacts which these countries have signed to access global markets.

Mr. Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General, CII stated that India and the CLMV countries could cooperate in areas such as agriculture development, water management and renewable energy.