Dr Edmund Chia along with Cambodian Secretary of State & Vice-Minister Tourism, H.E Tith Chantha inaugurate the Look East Business Show at U Soso Tham Auditorium in the city on Thursday. (ST)
SHILLONG: Chief Minister Mukul Sangma on Thursday inaugurated the three-day Look East Business Show-2015 “Strengthening South East Asian Ties with NE India” at Soso Tham Auditorium, where delegates from South East Asian countries like Cambodia, Vietnam, Bangladesh and members from various business houses from the North East are participating.
Cambodian Secretary of State & Vice-Minister Tourism, H.E Tith Chantha and Deputy High Commissioner of Singapore to India Dr. Edmund Chia are among the high-level delegates from South East Asia attending the business summit organized jointly by North Eastern Council, Union Ministry of DoNER, Department of Commerce & Industries, Meghalaya and the Indian Chamber of Commerce.
CM calls upon people of NE, South East Asia to look for common business interests
Highlighting the “natural connect” between the people of Northeast and South East Asia, Sangma called upon the people of both the regions to take leverage of the common potentialities and look for common business interests that can bring the people of these regions together. He stated that the strength of Northeast lies in its huge forest cover and stressed the need to link sustainable ecology with sustainable livelihood.
Terming Meghalaya as one of the fastest growing states in India in terms of GDP, the Chief Minister in his inaugural address said that the State is the place where things should start as far as North East is concerned. It is here that one can invest on tourism, health and other activities, he added.
“Our investment strategy for next year is to link these investments with thousands of families across the State who will be our partners and that is going to open up lots of entrepreneurship activities,” he said.
“If we are looking at potential partnership across the countries of South East Asia, our level of competition should be at global scale and not at local scale, therefore we want to create multi-level skilled workforce that can enable us to create conducive environment to attract investment for furthering our business ventures,” the Chief Minister said adding that the whole concept of “Look East” can ultimately be a game-changer only if our own people are willing to participate.
The Chief Minister told the visiting dignitaries that the State would be looking forward to having sector-specific engagements with them in an aggressive manner adding that “as we host this business summit we look forward for the opportunities of Look East Policy”
Addressing the gathering on the occasion, Member of North Eastern Council, M.P. Bezbaruah suggested to the participating delegates and ICC to identify items that people from NE can import, identify what tourists from their countries are looking for that NE can provide, suggest possibilities of joint collaboration on health care, coordinate tour operators and identify nodal institutions for people to people contact.
Cambodian Secretary of State Tith Chantha, in his address, highlighted the long history of friendship and cooperation between NE India and South East Asia and suggested on the need to improve connectivity to promote business cooperation between the two regions.
Deputy High Commissioner of Singapore to India, Dr. Edward Chia said that they had been encouraged to take a closer look at North East as the new Government of India had shown strong political will to develop the region.