Around 700 Chinese officials and business leaders from Guangdong province and Hong Kong are now visiting India to promote economic cooperation between the two countries, Chinese commercial counselor in India Peng Gang told Xinhua Thursday.
They were welcomed on Wednesday by India's human resource development minister Kapil Sibal and minister for food processing industries Subodh Kant Sahai who emphasized that the collaboration with China in low cost technology solutions and food processing will better the lives of the poor of both countries and the world.
Addressing the 2,000 Indian and Chinese audience in the Guangdong-Hong Kong business conference in New Delhi, Kapil Sibal said, "both Indian and China are low cost economies, if we are in collaboration with each other to create technologies on a low cost economy, the solution emerges will not only be for this part of the world but rest of the world,remaking India and China the center of the world. That must be the objective we achieve in the years to come."
Kapil Sibal unveiled a worlds' cheapest laptop with price of 35 dollars earlier this year and expected it to go into mass production in 2011 for Indian students.
Thought India's services are doing well in China with companies like TCS and Infosys operating both in Hong Kong and China's mainland, he pointed out that "we need collaboration in the hardware which is where the new technology going to be. That has not happen at the expected pace."
Noting finance as another area of collaboration between the two countries, he said India's infrastructure sector requires enormous fund. "I dare to say in the next five years we will need a trillion dollars, the demand for the power and road sector is nothing less than 550 billion dollars."
"Only with low cost and high quality solution can both India and China reach the poor and achieve inclusive growth," he said. " We need solution in low cost housing, in clean energy, in water management, and agricultural growth which are all major challenges. "
"Therefore what we need is collaboration, not confrontation, and competition with collaboration. Conference of this nature builds the bridges of that collaboration which is necessary for the low cost solutions to change the lives of world's poor people. " said Sibal.
Mentioning the disputes between the two large Asia neighbors, he said, "as countries move forward, there will be issues, but we need to resolve these issues in a collaborative and constructive manner. It is that collaboration that ultimately bring people together, economies together and it is in this spirit that I stand here as a representative of government of India to extend the warm welcome to the Chinese business and official delegation to say that time has come for the two greatest nation of the world march together hand in hand for the betterment of lives of millions of people."
Sahai, who has visited China twice this year, encouraged both Indian and Chinese investment in India's food processing Industry as 70 percent of India's population is in rural areas.
He said China has become a leader of the food processing sector and the two countries can collaborate with food technology, giving Indian farmer a market driven farming.
The delegation of Guangdong with more than 620 representatives from provincial government, 15 state-owned enterprise and 21 cities of Guangdong will have three large scale interactions with Indian business community both in New Delhi and Mumbai,expecting to sign a total of 5 billion U.S. dollars worth of contract during their stay in India.
Head of the delegation and the governor of Guangdong province Huang Huahua detailed here the huge potential between China's largest manufacturing base and India.
Contrasting the downside trend of last years' global financial crisis, he said the trade between Guangdong and India has risen 10 percent reaching 7.8 billion U.S. dollars which make up one fifth of the total Sino-India trade.
He suggested six major areas which the two can further cooperation, including trade, hardware and software of information technology, medicine, R&D and exchange of business information.
Donald Tsang, Chief Executive of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region encouraged Indian businesses to join the 1, 500 leading Indian companies already operating in Hong Kong, and highlighted the combined business advantages that Hong Kong and Guangdong have to offer for Indian investors.
He said Hong Kong offers support for research and development, protection of intellectual property rights, and good financial infrastructures while Guangdong in China's mainland has huge labor pool and technical skills.
Pointing out that Hong Kong makes good base for Indian companies who want to tap Mainland market and the Asia-Pacific region, Tsang said Hong Kong is also a familiar place for Indian entrepreneurs with English language and similar legal system and a fully convertible currency and free flow of capital.
During the conference, representatives from India's largest IT company Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Chairman of Asia Pacific Girija Pande, and Chairman of India's largest private airline company Jet Airways Naresh Goyal, also spoke about their successful experience of operating their businesses in Hong Kong and Guangdong Province.
China's ambassador to India Zhang Yan noted that this year coincides with the 60th anniversary of establishment of diplomatic ties between China and India and bilateral Economic cooperation has been a highlight of the relations in recent years.
Bilateral trade in the past decade has increase nearly 20 times and the two-way investment increased by 10 times in the recent three years while cooperation in project contracting of infrastructure construction is another fast growing sector.
He said the visit will continue to bring mutual benefits and win-win situation to both sides.
