Davos: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday held a bilateral meeting with Swiss President Alain Berset. 



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He arrived in Switzerland earlier on Monday to take part in World Economic Forum. PM Modi will deliver the opening address on Tuesday where he will "share his vision for India's future engagements with the international community".



He is the first Indian PM to attend the WEF in about 20 years since HD Deve Gowda in 1997. The Indian presence is the largest ever with over 130 participants


PM Modi is accompanied by six union ministers - Arun Jaitley, Suresh Prabhu, Piyush Goyal, Dharmendra Pradhan, MJ Akbar and Jitendra Singh.


A CEOs delegation, led by apex industry body CII and including Mukesh Ambani, Gautam Adani, Azim Premji, Rahul Bajaj, N Chandrasekaran, Chanda Kochhar, Uday Kotak and Ajay Singh, among others, are also representing India.


Earlier on Sunday, PM Modi had said that India's engagement with the outside world in the recent years had become "truly and effectively multi-dimensional covering the political, economic, people to people, security and other spheres".


In a series of tweets, he had also said, "At Davos, I look forward to sharing my vision for India's future engagement with the international community. I am confident that these bilateral meetings would be fruitful and give a boost to our relations with these countries and further strengthen economic engagement.


"The existing and emerging challenges to the contemporary international system and global governance architecture deserve serious attention of leaders, governments, policy makers, corporates and civil societies around the world," PM Modi had further said.


Over 3,000 world leaders from business, politics, art, academia and civil society will attend the 48th WEF annual meeting in the small ski resort town on snow-covered Alps mountains.


The summit is also being attended by US President Donald Trump, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emannuel Macron and UK Prime Minister Theresa May, among others.


Trump is due to close the conference with a speech on Friday.


(With PTI inputs)