London: India and the UK have agreed on the
text of a landmark civil nuclear deal and a formal pact may be
signed within a week, Britain's Business Secretary Lord Peter
Mandelson announced on Thursday.
"The civil nuclear deal text has been agreed to and it
will be signed soon, may be within a week after ministerial
approvals," Lord Mandelson told a joint press conference with
Commerce Minister Anand Sharma after the hour-long meeting of
the Joint Economic and Trade Committee at the Lancaster House.
He said the two sides have also agreed to open up a
number of professional services like legal, accountancy and
banking between the two countries.
"We have made great progress in a number of professional
services areas - lawyers, accountancy and banking. All these
indicate reasonable progress.
"We have been able to open up the professional and
business services area between us and we hope to do more work
for greater collaboration in the areas of manufacturing,
particularly high end of manufacturing - high technology, high
value added activity," Mandelson said.
Lord Mandelson said "we have identified one or two areas
where great collaboration can take place and defence is one
such areas.
"India wants collaboration in defence manufacture and
supply and we have our own units who are keen to collaborate
with India particularly in R and D. This is an area where
business-to-business collaboration between the two countries
can take place."
Concurring with Lord Mandelson, Sharma said "we had very
productive discussion at the JETCO (Joint Economic and Trade
Committee) meeting, reviewed functioning of various groups and
explored enhanced bilateral cooperation."
India and the UK has strategic relationship in a range of
areas from science to defence, agriculture and security-
related issues, he said.
"We have focused on manufacturing and innovation and a
number of other areas. Britain has Hi-Tech, and India is ready
to absorb it - particularly training across the industry for
skills to meet global shortage.
"We have also looked at agriculture, professional
services working group and reviewed their progress. We also
discussed cooperation in energy sector, investment in
infrastructure, professional services and telecommunication,"
Sharma said.
"Joint ventures in Indian Infrastructure was another key
area where in the next one and a half decades the investment
would be to the tune of 1.5 trillion dollars. The civilian
nuclear cooperation agreement will be signed soon," he said.
Lord Mandelson said that in the field of defence
collaboration, India would like to have armed vehicles for the
military.
There are so many different possibilities in the field of
defence as India wants to achieve self-sufficiency in defence,
he said.
PTI
First Published: Thursday, February 04, 2010, 20:33