By Feng Yingqiu,Xinhua,
YANGON : Indian Vice-President Shri M. Hamid Ansari is due to arrive in Nay Pyi Taw later on Thursday to begin an official visit to Myanmar.
Ansari’s Myanmar trip will be a reciprocal one to that to India made by Vice-Chairman of the Myanmar State Peace and Development Council Vice Senior-General Maung Aye in April last year.
During Maung Aye’s April New Delhi visit, three documents between the two governments were signed, namely a framework agreement on the construction and operation of a multi-modal transit and transport facility on the Kaladan River connecting the Sittway Port in Myanmar with the Indian state of Mizoram, a memorandum of understanding on intelligence exchange to combat transnational crime including terrorism, and an agreement on avoidance of double taxation for investors from the two countries and prevention of fiscal evasion with respect to taxes on income.
The framework agreement includes upgrading of Sittway Port of Myanmar, improvement tasks for running of vessels along the route of Kaladan from Sittway Port to Sitpyitpyin and construction of roads from Sitpyitpyin to the border region.
In June last year, Indian Minister of State for Commerce and Power Shri Jairam Ramesh visited Nay Pyi Taw, during which four more economic cooperation agreements were inked. They were one on bilateral investment promotion, a 20-million-U.S. dollar credit line between the Exim Bank of India and the Myanmar Foreign Trade Bank (MFTB) for financing the establishment of an aluminum conductor steel reinforced wire manufacturing facility, another 64-million-dollar credit line between the two banks for financing three 230-kilovolt transmission lines in Myanmar and the one for providing banking arrangement between the MFTB, Myanmar Investment and Trade Bank and the United Bank of India.
In October of the year, Indian Minister of State for Commerce and Power Jairam Ramesh visited Myanmar, during which the 3rd meeting of Myanmar-India Joint Trade Committee was held in Mandalay touching on issues such as bilateral cooperation in banking services, extension of export items and promotion of trade between the two countries, upgrading of border trade carried out at Reedkhoda (India) and Tamu-Moye (Myanmar) to normal trade, and bilateral cooperation in electric and energy sectors.
Following the meeting, India granted 18 more items of goods for trading in border area with Myanmar, bringing the total to 40.
An India-Myanmar information technology (IT) center was then opened in Yangon.
In November the same year, Myanmar and India held its 9th round of consultations between foreign offices of the two countries at deputy minister level, agreeing to cooperate in a wide range of areas of mutual interest and promptly implement the bilateral agreements inked during Maung Aye’s India visit.
Relations between Myanmar and India, which share a border of over 1,600 kilometers, have been growing during the past few years with cooperation in all sectors, particularly in those of trade and economy.
Myanmar official statistics showed that Myanmar-India bilateral trade reached 995 million U.S. dollars in the 2007-08 fiscal year with Myanmar’s exports to India accounting for 810 million U.S. dollars and its imports from India 185 million U.S. dollars.
India stands as Myanmar’s 4th largest trading partner after Thailand, China and Singapore and also Myanmar’s second largest export market after Thailand, absorbing 25 percent of its total exports.
The Myanmar compiled figures also showed that India’s contracted investment in Myanmar reached 219.57 million U.S. dollars as of October 2008. India injected 137 million dollars into the oil and gas sector in 2007.