By NNN-PTI
Kolkata : India and China will cooperate and not compete as there is enough space to accommodate each other, External Affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee said.
“The entire world is looking at India and China as potential economic powers in the future, and in this connection the two countries should cooperate and not compete,” Mukherjee said.
During 2007, the volume of bilateral trade between India and China had already touched 40 billion US dollar, he told a seminar on ‘Looking towards the East: Pioneering role of Prof P C Mohalanobis and its present possibility’, at the Indian Statistical Institute, here Saturday.
The External Affairs minister said the recent visit of the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to China would boost economic ties between the two countries and a target had been set to raise the volume of trade to 60 billion US dollar by 2010.
Stating that importance of SAARC had increased of late, he said four countries — Mauritius, Iran, Australia and Myanmar — had sought to be members of the SAARC.
Mukherjee said that the basic philosophy of the ‘Look East’ policy was to develop and work together.
He said the European Union, the US, China, Japan and Korea had been given Observer status of the SAARC.