“In essence, there will be 10 summits altogether, including the 27th Asean Summit, 18th Asean+3 Summit and the 10th East Asia Summit”, Anifah said during a media briefing on the 27th Asean Summit at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre yesterday.
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Biswajit Dhar, a professor of economics at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, said the status of RCEP negotiations is expected to figure in the talks between Modi and his Singaporean counterpart. The visit to Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur will be focused on the India-ASEAN and the East Asian Summits but the public reception of the visiting Prime Minister, especially in Kuala Lumpur, is going to be quite extensive with both the Indian mission and the local organisers putting up a big show of the Indian diaspora’s power in Malaysia.
Prime Minister Modi also said that Malaysia is a strategic partner of India.
Malacañang has not discussed the issues that the President would raise during the summit in Kuala Lumpur.
The summit will be held days after the G20 countries resolved to jointly fight terror worldwide in the wake of terror attack in Paris that claimed 129 lives.
The Prime Minister will be chairing all the summits and plenary sessions and is expected to take part in bilateral meetings with several counterparts from today until Sunday. “We want to further scale up our trade and economic ties”.
“We are extremely enthusiastic to have better relations with the ASEAN family in areas such as defence, security and cultural ties”.
He said ASEAN was India’s fourth largest trading partner and India is the sixth largest trading partner for ASEAN.
“Act East” was supposed to build on “Look East”, the foreign policy stance India adopted in the 1990s when it opened up its economy to the world, ending four decades of socialist-style insulation.
Thee will a meeting with selected Singapore CEOs and an interaction with the Indian community in the evening of that day before he flies back to New Delhi. “Our diaspora must be saluted for their accomplishments and bringing the two nations closer”, he said.
The ASEAN-India economic integration process has got a fillip with the creation of the ASEAN-India Free Trade Area in July this year, after the ASEAN-India Trade in Services and Investment Agreements came into force.
The bilateral trade with Singapore is about $ 17 billion and Singaporean companies are very active in India since early 1990s, including in equity markets. “Singapore’s success is indeed noteworthy”.
“Their achievements in urban development, urban transport, waste management, development of ports and skill development are well known”. On the morning of November 24, Modi will have a breakfast meeting with Singapore businessmen while he will meet Prime Minister of Singapore, later in the day.
“We would like to see India being aggressive to push its development agenda and really work towards it by reforming the bureaucracy and laws dealing with the industry”, said the first Singapore official quoted above. That apart, there are meetings between prominent Indian citizens in Malaysia and Mr. Modi.
Modi will also lay a wreath at INA (Indian National Army) Monument in Singapore and also visit the Institute of Technical Education College, which is involved in skills development. “Over 2 million persons of Indian origin reside in Malaysia”.
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The other ASEAN Dialogue Partners are the European Union and India.
