India, Qatar to expand co-operation to new areas: Ambassador

The thriving and robust India-Qatar relations with an annual trade volume of $16bn, are set to grow higher with collaborations in several new areas, stated Indian ambassador Vipul in an exclusive interview with Gulf Times.

“India and Qatar have very strong and robust bilateral relations. There are several new areas of that India and Qatar are aiming to collaborate and some of them have already taken place. In the last one year itself, there have been great developments on several areas,” he explained.

According to the Indian envoy, the visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in February this year has been quite successful as he met with the top the leadership of Qatar including His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani and His Highness the Father Amir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani among others.

“Prime minister Modi had very fruitful discussions with the leadership of Qatar which included many areas such as politics, trade, energy, investment, consular services and others. Recently His Highness the Amir made a phone call to congratulate Modi on his third term as the prime minister of India and the leaders again discussed various aspects for cementing the relationship,” explained Vipul.

The Indian ambassador disclosed that the trade volume between India and Qatar is about $16bn per annum and it is a great trade partnership between both the countries.

“India has recently signed an agreement to buy 7.5mn tonnes of LNG from Qatar from 2028 for 20 years which is a continuation of the long term partnership in energy with Qatar. In terms of total LNG import to India, 45% is from Qatar. More recently we have signed an agreement for Haldia Petrochemicals in India to receive 2mn tonnes of Naphtha from QatarEnergy,” continued the ambassador.

“In terms of investment, we have seen some big deals from Qatar including Qatar's investment in Indian firms such as Reliance and Adani Green. In addition we have people to people co-operation from both the sides which is very positive and robust. In the last one year itself, there are many positive developments in terms of investment,” he noted.

The envoy said that the relationship is very strong in many areas and there are several new areas where discussions for collaborations are going on. He elaborated: “The effort is to deepen the already existing collaboration and look for new partnerships to give better dimensions for the relationship between both the countries. The effort is to expand the relations to new areas as the world is changing with newer technology and energy concepts. Since our relations are more into energy, we are focusing on clean energy aspects for collaboration, more into renewable energy."

“Giving importance to Qatar's priorities and India's efforts, we would be focusing on sustainability, newer areas in technology and artificial intelligence. We are currently looking at new areas of sustainability, renewable energy, startups, food security and the traditional aspects of trade and investment in renewable energy. There is already collaboration in renewable energy between Qatar and Adani Green and we are focusing on other areas too,” added the ambassador.