SHILLONG, Feb 27: Meghalaya Chief Minister Mukul Sangma today called upon the people of both North Eastern states and South East Asian Countries to leverage upon the common potentialities and look for common business interests that can bring the people of these regions together. Inaugurating a three-day Look East Business Show-2015 on the theme ‘Strengthening South East Asian Ties with NE India’ here in Meghalaya, Dr Sangma highlighted the ‘natural connect’ between the people of Northeast and South East Asia while laying stress on ‘sustainable ecology with sustainable livelihood.’ Terming Meghalaya one of the fastest growing states in India in terms of GDP, the Chief Minister said things should start here as far as North East is concerned.
‘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. Dr Sangma said whole concept of ‘Look East’ can ultimately be a game-changer only if our own people are willing to participate. Dr Sangma also stressed on the need to create business opportunities for the citizens, need to understand fiscal management strategy, the need to create skilled workforce in order to achieve the goal of bridging the business cooperation across South East Asian countries through the North East. 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’
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 & 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 organised jointly by North Eastern Council, Union Ministry of DoNER, Department of Commerce and Industries, Meghalaya and the Indian Chamber of Commerce. Cambodian Secretary of State Tith Chantha, in his address, highlighted on 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.
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