Business Delegation Accompanies Amir Tamim
By TN Ashok Diplomatic Editor
New Delhi, March 20: The Amir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad, will be visiting India for two days from March 24 at the invitation of the Indian President Pranab Kumar Mukherjee to help strengthen the strong foundations of bilateral relations between the two countries.
India and Qatar have a long history of political, diplomatic and economic ties and the bilateral trade between the two countries has touched over US $ 16 billion heavily weighted in favour of the arab nation as India is one of the largest importers of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) from that country to meet its domestic demand from the industrial sector.
Amir Tamim brings with him a high level delegation of senior officials of the Qatar government as also the captains of industry from that country possibly to explore areas of future cooperation.
Giving details about the Amirt’s visit, , Syed Akbaruddin, spokesman of the Ministry of External Affairs, told newsmen today the former Amir had visited India three times between 1999 to 2005. Former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh had visited Qatar during his tenure as the prime minister of the UPA government then.
India and Qatar enjoy people to people contact and the former has a huge labour force of 600,000 Indians living and working there in different industries. India constitutes 80% of the expatriate population of Qatar.
Qatar which is going through major infrastructural development has opened the gates for Indian industries to participate in EPC contracts (Engineering, Procurement and Construction). Qatar is also the venue for the FIFA World Cup 2022 and it is likely that a lot of infrastructural projects relating to this could be farmed out to potential international bidders and India would be one of the countries keenly contesting to participate.