External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj who is on two day visit to Egypt, invited the diaspora to invest in the country as she listed steps taken by the Narendra Modi government to boost trade and make India a global manufacturing hub.
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In an address to a select gathering of the Indian community in Egypt on Sunday evening, Swaraj drew attention to India’s strong economic rebound after the National Democratic Alliance, a centre-right coalition led by the BJP, came to power.
“The Minister’s visit to Cairo will provide an opportunity to review the entire gamut of our bilateral and multilateral relations and to exchange views with the Egyptian leadership covering whole range of issues of mutual interest”, the External Affairs Ministry said.
Both countries are expected to review bilateral relationship with a particular focus on enhancing economic engagement during Swaraj’s visit.
Egypt has traditionally been one of India’s most important trading partners in the African continent.
Appealing the diaspora community to be part of the “India growth story” she said, “We are committed to good governance, transparency, inclusive and sustainable growth and we as the government is ushering into an era of rapid economic development”.
“We have achieved great success in the field of foreign office as well”. India’s imports from Egypt were worth United States dollars 1.74 billion during 2014-15.
Swaraj also said that she was pleased that the Embassy of India has been working closely with the Indian Community and has established two organizations.
“India can be strong part in that”, Bhattacharyya said.
In addition to politics and economy, there are certain specific areas that both countries would like to have closer cooperation in, including the fields of energy and medicine, he said. Some of our companies are working here.
“We are also working on a pan-African tele-medicine and tele-education projects in conjunction with the University of Alexandria”, he added. A very exciting project is that we are going to establish an IT Centre of Excellence at Al-Azhar University.
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“The President said, and External Affairs Minister agreed with him, that it is a question of encashing on the goodwill that the people of the two countries have with each other into something concrete on the ground”.
