Good afternoon,

I’d like to thank Foreign Affairs Office of Yunnan Provincial People’s Government of the People’s Republic of China, and Consulate General of China to Kolkata, India, for the invitation for me to address on the 3rd China-South Asia Cooperation Forum.

As president, I have the privilege of leading the Bangel Chamber of Commerce and Industry, India’s oldest chamber of commerce, dating its origins to 1833. For close to two centuries, the Bangel Chamber has been an integral part of industrial transformation in India, with representations from various sectors, featuring the great and modern industries, like manufacturing, engineering, shipping, to new-age businesses, like technologies, renewable, advanced skills, and others.

China and India share great potential for complementarities that benefit both sides in terms of trade and investment. India and China bilateral trade continues to boom crossing 100 billion US dollars for the second year in the first 9 months of 2022.

However, the optimum potential is yet to be reached. We believe there is much scope of growing India’s export to China to balance the trade. Easing of travel restrictions to China will certainly go a long way in encouraging business contacts between the two countries. Business on both sides are eagerly waiting for positive developments on this front, and example of such collaborative effort is my company, Exide Industries Limited is India’s largest battery manufacturer. Exide signed an agreement with SVOLT of China for setting up a multi-gigawatt lithium-ion cell manufacturing plant, construction of which is already commenced, start-up production is expected in 2024.

As the two largest countries by population, China and India have pervasive effects on the ecosphere. Because of their human population size and long international boundary, they share biodiversity and threats to it, as well as crop pests, and diseases. Coordinated and collaborative research has the potential to improve the two countries’ environmental performance with the implications for global sustainability. India and China need to together address areas of sustainability and clean energy. The issues at the United Nation’s COP 26 in 2021 of both the  countries were similar.
As the two largest emerging economies, China and India are already at the forefront of economic growth and development. Now they are also embarking on ambitious steps to combat climate change by integrating climate actions into their economic strategies, they will be demonstrating new approaches to growth in the global South.

Thank you once again for inviting me to address this forum, I wish all the participants very fruitful discussions in the days ahead.

Thank you.