India, China ink MoUs worth $5.2 bn
New Delhi: Eleven agreements that envisage a total investment of more than $5.2 billion were signed between the governments and business groups of India and China at the second strategic economic dialogue between the two nations.
The neighbours agreed to encourage financial institutions to set up operations in either country and undertake studies in areas including innovative financial methods to support priority sectors such as infrastructure, according to a joint statement.
Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said not all the agreements were new and work on some of these projects had already been started. “The MoUs (memorandum of understanding) signing is just an occasion to acknowledge the fact that there is a lot of commercial activity going on,” Ahluwalia told reporters.
A $3 billion financing agreement between Reliance Power Ltd and China’s Guangdong Mingyang Windpower Group Co. Ltd and a $800 million agreement between NIIT China (Shanghai) Ltd and China’s Hainan province to establish an information technology enclave in Hainan were among the seven private sector pacts signed on Monday.
While Mingyang had announced in July its intentions to enter India through Reliance Power’s proposed 2,500 megawatt (MW) clean-energy projects, NIIT announced on Monday its agreement with Hainan province on the BSE website.
Four government agreements were also signed for joint studies and technical cooperation. The agreements were between the two countries’ apex planning bodies, their railway ministries, National Association of Software and Services Companies and China Software Industry Association, and the Indian Bureau of Energy Efficiency and China’s apex planning body, National Development and Reform Commission.
The railways agreement is aimed at improving technical cooperation in the areas of high-speed rail, heavy haulage and station development, Ahluwalia said.
Outstanding issues such as those related to inadequate servicing of Chinese power equipment were also discussed.
“Chinese equipment is very competitively priced, but when problems arise, servicing is a problem,” Ahluwalia said. “Since we don’t want to use this as a protectionist argument, we would encourage them to improve their vendor support capabilities.”
The first dialogue between India and China was held in September last year in China, which set up five working groups on policy coordination, railways, energy cooperation, environmental protection, and information technology and technology-enabled services.
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