REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA - As India celebrates 20 years of dialogue relations with ASEAN, business cooperation between both parties has created many mutual benefits. The Director, Market Integration Directorate of ASEAN Economic Community Department, Subash Bose Pillai, explained the benefits on Wednesday on ASEAN-India Business Seminar for Progress and Prosperity in Jakarta.

In his remark entitled ASEAN as a Driver of Global Growth, he said that the first mutual benefit of the cooperation was connectivity. Connectivity encompasses infrastructure, institutional, and people-to-people connectivity. India is actively engaged in building large segments of roads in Myanmar to link India's Northeast region with Myanmar and Thailand through a trilateral highway.

The second mutual benefit, he said, was tourism. India provides a tourism program of cross cultural, rural adventure, and also budget tourism. Cooperation on tourism also allows private sector to be actively involved on improving bilateral partnership.

"The new cooperation in on space technology," Pillai said. Space technology includes communication. Science and technology, as well as trade and investment, had become the focus of ASEAN and Indian engagement since India became the sectoral dialogue partner of ASEAN in 1992 and a full dialogue partner in 1996.

The last mutual benefit, he said, was that ASEAN offered high quality products to India. Volume of trade and investment between ASEAN and India has been increasing, but it is relatively low compared to other dialogue partners of ASEAN. Based on latest statistics, bilateral trade in 2011-2012 reached 79.3 billion USD, increasing 29 percent over the previous period.

Ikuti Whatsapp Channel Republika