The Egyptian President Dr Mohamed Morsi will be on a four-day State visit to India from Monday, alongwith a high level ministerial, official and business delegation.
Foremost on the agenda is the finalization of the date for the launch of the Egyptian nano-satellite, EgyCubeSat into space by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
EgyCubeSat weighs only one kg and with trappings and fixtures and everything it its about 6.5 kg. It a great pride of Egypt, being indigenously built and designed. When launched it will essentially be used for scientific purposes.
Dates for the fourth meeting of the Joint India-Egypt Joint Defence Committee slated next month in Delhi are likely to be finalized. The meeting is slated to explore new areas of cooperation in defence sector. India and Egypt have ongoing exchanges in under regular defence training programmes.
President Morsi will be received ceremonially at the Rashtrapati Bhavan. He will have delegation-level talks with the Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh. The Indian President Pranab Mukherjee will host a banquet in his honour. The Indian External Affairs Minister,Salman Khurshid will call upon him and so also the Vice-President, Hamid Ansari and the Chairperson of the ruling UPA coalition, Sonia Gandhi and the leader of the Opposition Sushma Swaraj.
At the delegation level setting up of a Centre of Excellence in Information Technology by India in Al-Azhar University in Egypt will be finalised alongwith other collaborations in IT sector.
Among other things to be discussed are setting up of a vocational training centre in Cairo by India and bilateral cooperation in biotechnology, cyber security, science and technology, small and medium sized industries, micro-finance, capacity building for addressing unemployment. Egypt is willing to learn from Indian pluralistic society.
India and Egypt already have several bilateral agreements covering a wide area in place. This time there would discussions by going into the specifics.
“What we are doing is moving from general agreements to specifics of collaboration,” said the Joint Secretary WANA in the Indian External Affairs Ministry, Rajeev Shahare.
“In this visit we will be looking at interaction at various levels. It has all components of a very strong relationship: on the political level, on the economic level, on the level of engagement in the science and technology areas, cutting edge technology areas, frontier areas of science, in information technology. So these will be certainly on the table for discussion,” he said.
According to sources Egyptian ministers for foreign affairs, information technology, trade and commerce and investment are accompanying President Morsi.
The Egyptian President will be interacting with the Indian business community. The commerce ministers of the two countries would be chairing a business meeting organised by the three apex Indian industry bodies – FICCI, Assocham and CII.
India-Egypt bilateral trade has witnessed a rise of 30% from $3.2 billion to $4.5 billion as per Egyptian fiscal year, while as per Indian fiscal year the rise is up to $5.5 billion. India is now Egypt’s seventh largest trading partner and second largest source of its exports. Indian exports have comfortably crossed $2.3 billion last year.
Indian products such as two-wheelers and three-wheelers are rapidly gaining ground over other competitors who had a head start and were dominating the market.
There are about 50 Indian companies operating in Egypt in a very diverse range of sectors like petrochemicals, chemicals, paints, consumer products, healthcare products, adhesives. The big names of Indian companies are Aditya Birla, Kirloskar which have established their presence for at least 60 years. The Daburs are operating in Egypt. A new Indian company has come up called Sanmar who are manufacturing PVC and caustic soda. It is a huge company with a billion dollar plus investment. India’s total investments are more than $ 2.5 billion in Egypt.
The geo-strategic location that Egypt enjoys enables Indian companies to look at markets not only from the fact that Egypt itself is a $ 260 billion economy with 85 million consumers, the second largest in Africa, but also that by having a manufacturing base in Egypt they are able to access markets in Europe, in Africa, and in West Asia.
However there are few Egyptian companies operating in India.
India to put Egypt in Space, Prez Morsi on way to New Delhi
ASHOK B SHARMA - 2013-03-16 10:30
New Delhi: Relations between India and Egypt is likely regain its robustness as it was in the Nehru-Nasser era. India expects that with the change of regime in Egypt following the Arab Spring efforts should be put in place to cement the relationship into cordiality, which had suffered over decades.