By IANS,
New Delhi : The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Thursday launched an India Business Forum (IBF) in China, a lobby to promote bilateral trade and economic cooperation between the two countries.
The IBF will act as a forum for promoting India-China trade through collective and consensual approach and will also work with the Indian embassy in Beijing and others towards “building brand India”, the CII said in a statement released here.
The forum was officially launched at a seminar in Beijing, organised by the CII in association with the Indian embassy, in which several industrial leaders and diplomats from both sides participated.
“In this time of global financial and economic crisis, there is need for stronger cooperation and coordination between India and China,” Nirupama Rao, India’s ambassador to China, said at the seminar.
Saying that the countries should have effective stimulus measures to weather the financial crisis, the diplomat said: “The crisis must be turned into an opportunity by tackling it with the key commodity of confidence.”
She added that the bilateral trade between India and China had increased 10-fold in the last six years and China had become the largest trading partner of India in 2008.
“By 2025, it is highly probable that China-India economic ties through trade, investment and technology linkages may be one of the most important bilateral relationship in the world,” Rao said.