Shri Randhir Jaiswal, Official Spokesperson: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I warmly welcome you to this Press engagement on the visit of Prime Minister to Qatar. On the dais, we have our Foreign Secretary, Shri Vinay Kwatra. We also have our Ambassador to Qatar, Ambassador Vipul; and Joint Secretary in charge of Gulf Division and the Ministry of External Affairs, Shri Aseem Mahajan. With that, I give the floor to Foreign Secretary to make his opening remarks.
Shri Vinay Kwatra, Foreign Secretary: Thank you very much. Ambassador Vipul, Joint Secretary Aseem, friends from the media; very good afternoon, and thank you for coming out this afternoon for this Special Briefing on Prime Minister’s just concluded official visit to Qatar. As you know, Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi ji arrived in Doha yesterday evening on what is his second official visit to Qatar. He was welcomed at the airport by Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, His Excellency Mr. Soltan bin Saad Al-Muraikhi. Prime Minister, you would recall, had last visited Qatar in 2016.
Yesterday evening, Prime Minister Modi met with the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Qatar, His Excellency Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani. The two leaders discussed, at length, various elements of bilateral engagement as also issues of regional importance to both countries. This was followed by a dinner hosted by Excellency, the Prime Minister of Qatar, in honour of Prime Minister Modi. The dinner was attended by senior ministers on both sides.
This morning, there were three key and significant elements of Prime Minister's program. First was ceremonial welcome. Honorable Prime Minister was accorded a ceremonial welcome at the Amiri Diwan, where His Highness Amir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani received him. Thereafter, the ceremonial Guard of Honour was presented to the Prime Minister. The two leaders, thereafter, held detailed discussions, first in a delegation level format and then in the restricted format. The topics of discussion included wide range of areas of bilateral cooperation, including trade partnership, investment cooperation, energy partnership, issues engaged in regional security, cultural affinity, and people-to-people ties. In this, when the two leaders spoke, they spoke about the need for strategic investment and strategic partnership in the field of energy and technology and to proceed beyond the (inaudible) relationship in this field. They also discussed issues of regional and international importance.
The two leaders, of course, recalled their last meeting on the sidelines of COP28, last December. Prime Minister thanked His Highness, the Amir, for his support for the welfare of the Indian community and, in this regard, expressed his deep appreciation to His Highness, the Amir, for the release of eight Indian nationals of Al-Dahra company. We are extremely gratified to see them back in India. Honorable Prime Minister invited His Highness, the Amir, to pay a visit to India. His Highness, the Amir, also hosted a banquet lunch at the Palace in honour of the Prime Minister.
The third and the last segment was Honorable Prime Minister's meeting with His Highness, the Father Amir, which was the last part of the engagements today. Prime Minister congratulated His Highness, the Father Amir on his visionary leadership that has paved the way for Qatar's development over the past decades, as also laid a strong foundation for India-Qatar bilateral partnership. Father Amir affirmed that India and Qatar share an unwavering bond epitomized by mutual trust and cooperation. He also appreciated the role of the Indian community and Indian diaspora in Qatar in the development and nourishing of the bilateral partnership.
India and Qatar, just to recall, are very important trade partners. There are several segments of our bilateral cooperation that are important, significant, and growing. I would just highlight three, four of them. First is the bilateral trade, which is roughly standing at close to $20 billion. Two is the strong investment cooperation that India and Qatar already have. Three, which I just mentioned, a very strong and vibrant Indian diaspora based and living in Qatar. And four, of course, the multi-faceted partnership in the field of energy, which includes energy trade as also other segments of energy supply chain contributing to a stronger partnership in the field of energy security. You would recall that most recently, on the sidelines of India Energy Week in last week, held in Goa; two countries signed an agreement for supply of 7.5 MMTPA, I think it stands for Million Metric Tons Per Annum, LNG from Qatar to India for 20 years, starting 2028 onwards. This long-term LNG partnership goes way back to 1999 and remains robust, strong, and future-oriented.
All in all, the Honorable Prime Minister has had a very successful visit to Qatar. The visit has set the stage and laid the basis for taking India-Qatar relationship to much higher level across the whole domain of cooperation; as also laid foundation to explore partnership in some of the new areas, which during the discussions today, included the domain of space, technology, and innovation. I would stop here and take some questions. Unfortunately; Prime Minister's departure is imminent, so we'll only be able to take one round of questions.
Arun: Good afternoon, sir. I'm Arun from DD News. Just wanted to know, sir, that what exactly is the objective of this visit of Prime Minister Modi to Qatar now; and what is the future trajectory now after this visit as far as the bilateral or the relation between India and Qatar is concerned? And second, sir, you mentioned about the technology. Just if you can briefly highlight that what aspects of technology were discussed, because India's fintech, UPI are making ways all across the world. So any specific thing in technology parts, sir?
Joseph: Good afternoon. I'm Joseph Varghese from Gulf Times, Qatar. I'd like to know some of the details of the discussions that the Prime Minister had with the Qatari officials, Qatari authorities, Qatari leadership here; regarding, of course, the technology as well as the investment as well as trade that you mentioned; some of the details of the deal, I mean, the topics that you have discussed. And in addition to that, were there any agreements signed between both parties during the discussions? I'd like to know more about that.
Satyendra: I'm Satyendra Pathak from Qatar Tribune newspaper. As the Foreign Secretary rightly said that now, the trade relations between Qatar and India has reached almost $20 billion. But it is finally in favor of Qatar. So what India is trying to do to bridge this gap? Thank you, sir.
Shri Vinay Kwatra, Foreign Secretary: Okay. Thank you very much. I think in some ways, the questions are interrelated, so we'll try to cover them in a single answer. Look, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, the Prime Minister's visit to Qatar is focused on; one, consolidating the wide-ranging partnership that India and Qatar have across different fields of economic cooperation. Two, also through the visit this time, build on the gains of 2016 visit, build on the gains achieved through subsequent high-level political exchanges between the two countries, and lay a foundation for what the two countries driven by the strong leaderships of His Highness, The Amir, the Prime Minister of India can achieve in months and years ahead in a manner that not only expands the areas of bilateral cooperation, but also increases convergences on regional issues, also looks at partnership across in third countries; four, and whatever we're doing in a bilateral space, we look at that from a strategic perspective rather than from a transactional perspective. This then essentially segues into the areas of technology, which you asked, the areas of trade investment and energy.
So in terms of technology per se, whether it is the domain of fintech, whether it is the domain of technologies used in the building of smart cities, for example; three, the innovation ecosystems; four, technology innovation ecosystem combining with the skilled manpower; and then taking a convergence of these four areas into individual sectors, such as space, education, energy, automotive electric vehicles, for example, and the ecosystem of each of these areas. So space has an ecosystem, auto sector has an ecosystem, EV has an ecosystem. So the whole idea is to not just look at technology from a singular domain of fintech, which you asked, but also expand the scope of technology partnership to other domains and then within domains to the entire ecosystem of each domain.
Similarly, with regard to the investment, energy also, the idea was that yes, India and Qatar have a strong energy security, energy trade partnership, but there are several aspects of energy partnership where India and Qatar could have a strategic view. So green energy, for example, renewable space, for example, building supply chains that go beyond trade in the field of clean energy, using technology in the energy space, looking at new innovations that are coming up in the energy field, etc, etc. The idea was to view it from a comprehensive frame of reference rather than from a very, important but a restricted frame of reference of pure energy trade. The same applies to the investment also, that we should look at investment from a strategic perspective, given that India is poised to become the third largest economy in coming years, given that the growth trajectory of Indian economy is very strong, robust and also substantial, which then opens up opportunity for countries, including particularly partners like Qatar, to become our strategic partners through the investment in that development and growth journey, but do it in a manner that is of course beneficial to both the partners. So, not looking at pure play investments, purely from the point of view of return on equity, but also on using investment as a vehicle actually to build a long-term strategic partnership between the two countries. So, investment from a strategic perspective, energy.
Similarly, in terms of trade, the focus on trade is to; one, broad base the trade basket, and then within the existing trade baskets, look at; one, the expansion of trade, building new trade market. When I say new trade market, what I mean is that you may have a product for which there may not necessarily be currently a market in Qatar, but I think the way the complementarities of the two economies are growing, it's quite possible we can have new market demand created in Qatar. At some level, although this didn't come up specifically in discussion, how the partnership between the two countries can also be used to expand it into a regional trade dimension, which is significant. So technology, investment, energy, trade, all aspects were discussed at length with a view to look at them, assess them from a strategic perspective. Per se, any specific agreement was not signed during the visit, but as I said, the visit will set the stage, lay the basis for a stronger, deeper, more extensive, wide-ranging partnership between India and Qatar. Thank you.
Shri Randhir Jaiswal, Official Spokesperson: With that, we come to the end of the Press briefing. Thank you ladies and gentlemen for your presence. Thank you sir.
Shri Vinay Kwatra, Foreign Secretary: Thank you very much.