NEW DELHI: Malaysia today pitched for deepening its economic engagement with India and said that achieving the trade target of USD 15 billion annually by 2020, which the two countries had set, looks “promising”.
Malaysia’s High Commissioner to India Hidayat Abdul Hamid, while addressing an interactive session on ‘Doing Business with Malaysia’ here, said India was an important trading partner for Malaysia and both the countries needed to work closely in order to deepen bilateral trade relations.
“Our bilateral trade performance has strengthened to USD 14.3 billion in 2017, marking an increase of over 21.8 per cent from USD 11.8 billion in 2016. From January to June this year, the two-way trade has reached USD 7.7 billion,” he said at the event organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, and the Malaysian High Commission.
Noting that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak had set the annual target of trade at USD 15 billion by 2020, the envoy said he believes that with the current momentum and performance that target “looks promising”.
“We just need to put more efforts in realizing that,” Hidayat said. (AGENCIES)