Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva is arriving India on day-long visit Tuesday at the invitation of PM Manmohan Singh to hold delegation level talks and boost trade and commerce.
This would be Vejjajiva’s first visit to India.
He leads a delegation that includes the Foreign Minister of Thailand and the President of Thai Trade Representative.
In the delegation-level talks the Prime Minister of India would be assisted by the External Affairs Minister, Home Minister, Commerce and Industries Minister, Minister of Road Transport and Highways besides other senior officials.
Vejjajiva will meet over breakfast several CEO?s of Indian companies.
Thereafter there is a ceremonial reception at the Rashtrapati Bhavan by the Prime Minister of India.
External Affairs Minister S M Krishna will call on the visiting dignitary, who himself would be calling on the President and Vice-President of India .
The three Chambers of Commerce ? FICCI, CII and ASSOCHAM ? would be hosting a business luncheon for the Prime Minister with captains of Indian trade and industry.
In the evening he holds delegation-level talks with the Prime Minister of India, who would also be hosting a banquet in his honour.
Vejjajiva emplanes for Bangkok late in the evening Tuesday.
Dr. Manmohan Singh and the Thai Prime Minister met in October 2009 at Hua Hin, Thailand, during the Seventh India-ASEAN Summit meeting. Next, they also met in Hanoi during the East Asia Summit and Eighth India-ASEAN Summit meeting in Oct , 2010.
“This high-level attention has led to a robust expansion on our cooperation including in areas like economics and trade, security, defence, culture, people-to-people contacts, and the others,” MEA spokesperson Vishnu Prakash said.
India and Thailand bilateral trade grew six times in ten years from 2000, and last year crossed 6.6 billion dollars. In fact, last year alone saw a spike of something like 34 per cent.
Investments in both directions have been growing.
Indian companies have invested over 1.5 billion dollars while the Thai companies, according to the Thai statistics, have invested more than half of that amount at about 800 million dollars.
Major Indian companies and business houses are established in Thailand, doing very good business in Thailand. That includes the Tata Group, the Aditya Birla Group.
Tata Group is in a variety of sectors including automobile, steel, software while the Aditya Birla Group is in chemicals and textiles.
Besides there are other companies like the Indorama Group; Ranbaxy, Dabur, Lupin in pharmaceuticals; Bharti Airtel, NIIT, Punj Lloyd.
Likewise, Thai companies are present in India in diverse fields including agroprocessing, infrastructure ? where they have a number of core strengths ? automobile, engineering, banking, housing, and so on.
Thai companies, do have core strengths in infrastructure development including roads, elevated highways, metros, housing complexes. A number of Thai companies have actually been awarded infrastructure projects and are currently executing them including the Kolkata International Airport, some sections of Delhi Metro, hydro projects, national highways, and others.
“But there is still a lot of untapped potential both in trade and economic sides and that is what both sides seek to harness,” the spokesperson said.
In that direction, in October 2003 a Framework Agreement on India-Thailand Free Trade Agreement was signed in Bangkok and India had 82 products that were identified under the Early Harvest Scheme for eliminating duties.
With India and Thailand sharing a maritime boundary. the two nations have similar challenges and concerns.
“And it is natural that we coordinate and cooperate in areas of security and defence, which includes joint exercises, coordinated patrolling, ship calls, training of officers in each other?s armed forces institutions, and so on,” the spokesperson said.