Prez promises support to Cambodia

via CAAI

India Blooms News Service

Phnom Penh (Cambodia), Sept 16 (IBNS): President Pratibha Patil on Thursday promised support to the Cambodian government in strengthening its economy and also increase bilateral trade between India and the southeast Asian nation which currently sits at a modest USD 50 million.

Addressing an India-Cambodia Business meeting here, President Patil said India’s trillion dollar economy, ranked as the fourth largest in the world on the basis of purchasing power parity, offered a “much greater scope for expansion” in bilateral trade.

“In order to promote trade with Cambodia, India has extended a duty free tariff preference facility since last year. I encourage the Cambodian business community to avail of this facility in full at an accelerated pace,” she said.

She said that she welcomed the Cambodian government’s initiatives to improve agriculture productivity, as well as to transform Cambodia into a key rice exporting country in the world.

“I can assure that India would cooperate and share its experience with Cambodia in achieving this objective. India would be happy to extend training support and also depute Indian experts to Cambodia under bilateral co-operation arrangements,” she said.

Along with agriculture, Patil said tourism, IT and IT enabled services “could be areas which are worth exploring.”

She said that trade and investment opportunities in the agriculture sector have also generated a lot of interest among Indian enterprises and expressed hope that the current visits would fructify into actual business transactions.