Crown Prince Salman Bin Abdul Aziz, Deputy Premier and Minister of Defense, received in Riyadh on Tuesday Indian Minister of Finance P. Chidambaram and the accompanying delegation. The audience was attended by Minister of Commerce and Industry Dr. Tawfiq Al-Rabiah, Saudi Ambassador to India Saud Al-Sati, and Indian Ambassador to the Kingdom Hamid Ali Rao. – SPA Hazem Al-Motairy Okaz/Saudi Gazette RIYADH – Abdullah Al-Mobti, President of the Council of Saudi Chambers (CSC), said that Tuesday's meeting with Indian Minister of Finance P. Chidambaram added a new impetus to the excellent bilateral relations. Addressing a meeting organized in honor of the visiting Indian dignitaries by CSC, he said that the delegation held extensive talks with Saudi businessmen on ways to further bolster business and trade ties and cooperation. “Businessmen from both the countries are anxious to seize the golden opportunities in front of them in various fields thanks to the strong strategic partnership. The excellent relations between the two countries contributed substantially in raising the volume of trade exchange to about $27 billion in 2012.” Mobti noted that India is one of the major trade partners of Saudi Arabia. “There are about 2.8 million Indians working in the Kingdom. This shows how Indians are contributing to the Kingdom's development process,” he said. Mobti drew attention to the expanding relations and the setting up of several new joint ventures like the SABIC center with an initial investment of $100 million in India and TATA Motor's Jaguar project in the Kingdom. Saudi Arabia is keen to expand its cooperation with India in all commercial and investment sectors. As of 2012, Mobti said, there were 350 Indian projects in the Kingdom with a total value of $1.6 billion in various sectors such as construction, contracting, administrative consulting, and IT. Chidambaram and Minister of Commerce and Industry Tawfiq Al-Rabiah co-chaired on Tuesday the 10th session of the Saudi-India Joint Commission Meeting (JCM).
The meeting discussed various issues of economic and commercial interest to both sides, including an increase in exchange of business delegations, trade facilitation, cooperation between educational institutes and sharing expertise in science and technology. In the previous JCM session, the two sides had identified 42 areas of cooperation and made significant progress in each of those areas. “Bilateral trade and commercial relations between India and Saudi Arabia is growing at a steady rate.
Chidambaram, who arrived in Riyadh on Monday, was accompanied by Arvind Mayaram, secretary in the Department of Economic Affairs, and other senior officials representing different ministries. Saudi Arabia is the fourth largest trading partner for India. The value of the two-way trade between the two countries in 2012-13 exceeded $43 billion and reached $32.7 billion during April-November 2013, registering an increase of 14 percent over the corresponding period in the previous year. Saudi Arabia is the largest supplier of crude oil to India and provides 19 percent of India's crude imports.
