Opinion

Co-op with China benefits the poor: India

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-10-28 17:36

NEW DELHI - Chinese Commercial Counselor in India Peng Gang told Xinhua News Agency on Thursday that nearly 700 Chinese officials and business leaders from Guangdong and Hong Kong visiting New Delhi are the largest delegation from China to India on record.

The delegation was welcomed by India's Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal and Minister for Food Processing Industries Subodh Kant Sahai in New Delhi on Wednesday. The ministers 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.

"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. That must be the objective we achieve in the years to come," Kapil Sibal said, addressing the 2,000 Indian and Chinese audiences in the Guangdong-Hong Kong Business Conference in New Delhi.

Noting finance as another area of collaboration between the two countries, he said India infrastructure sector requires enormous fund. "I dare say next five year we will need one trillion dollars, the demand for the power and road sector is nothing less than $550 billion."

Thought India's services are doing well in China with companies like TCS and Infosys operating both in Hong Kong and mainland China, he pointed out that the two countries need collaboration in high-technology sectors.

"Only with low cost and high quality solution can both India and China reach the poor and achieve inclusive growth which are iterated both by China's President Hu Jintao and India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh," he said, adding that India needs solutions in low-cost housing, clean energy, water management, and agricultural growth areas.

"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 Kapil Sibal.

Both China and India need to move forward, the minister said.

"There will be issues, but we need to resolve these issues in a collaborative and constructive manner," he said.

Subodh Kant Sahai, minister of food processing of India, has visited China twice this year. He encouraged both Indian and Chinese invest in India's food processing industry because agricultural population takes 70 percent of India's total population.

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He said China has become a leader of food processing sector, and the two countries can collaborate with food technology, giving Indian farmer a market driven farming.

"Though India produces largest quantity of milk, second largest in vegetables and fruits, and so many things are second largest, but our processing level is very low.

"China has gone much ahead in the area. Therefore I require your investing in food processing industry. It not only will benefit you, but give you a sense of helping the poor and the opportunity for providing food security for the humankind," said the minister.