India, Egypt want to expand partnership in various fields

The Dollar Business Bureau

Sanjay Bhattacharya, Indian ambassador to Egypt, met with Egypt’s Minister of International Cooperation Sahar Nasr and Minister of Social Solidarity Ghada Wali last week. India and Egypt have a close partnership in various fields and are envisaging to expand into new areas of cooperation.

“India and Egypt have a very close partnerships in various fronts and we want to expand our agenda which will include the possibility of new cooperation opportunities,” Sanjay Bhattacharya told the media. He was speaking to the media after meeting the Egyptian Minister of Social Solidarity recently.

India had extended its collaboration in achieving two large developmental projects; the solar project and the vocational training project in Egypt. The success of both the projects has made Egypt keen to enlist India’s cooperation in achieving success in other fields too.

India is looking forward to start the new development project, a centre of excellence in the critical field of Communication and Information Technology (CIT)  at the Al-Azhar University. An MoU for the same was signed in 2013 during the visit of  the Egyptian President Mohammed Morsy to India.

The Indian ambassador had discussions with the Grand Imam of Al Azhar on the CIT project, who expressed happiness at the way the project was shaping up. "I had the opportunity to call on the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar some weeks ago and we had discussed this project as well with him and the Grand Sheikh was very happy about this project. He has said that we will use that Indian model in the other institutions of Al-Azhar University across Egypt. So we hope we could be able to cooperate together in this project because we see the very central role of Al-Azhar on the development - not just in Egypt but in the entire Arab world," the ambassador said.

Egypt is India’s sixth largest trading partner with both the countries enjoying strong economic ties, one of the reasons for ambassador Bhattacharya keen to bring about future projects with his Egyptian counterparts. "We are also looking at how we can collaborate further between India and Egypt into the sector of micro and small enterprises, in the sector of renewable energy particularly solar energy. And whether we can utilise the line of credit that India has offered under the Africa summit funds for project in Egypt," he added.

During his discussions with the minister of Social Solidarity, the Ambassador had discussed  a wide range of issues including empowerment of youth and in particular women so that they could participate in various civil society cooperative initiatives that India and Egypt have taken on.