Washington, April 05: U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has left for New Delhi to launch the India-U.S. Economic and Financial Partnership which according to him would set the pace and put and economic relationship between the two countries on a new trajectory.
“The newly-formed Partnership aims to strengthen bilateral engagement and understanding on macroeconomic, financial sector and infrastructure-related issues,” said the Treasury Department as Mr. Geithner left for India accompanied by the Federal Reserve Vice-Chairman Donald Kohn and a number of other senior officials from the administration on Sunday evening.
On Tuesday, Mr. Geithner is scheduled to meet his Indian counterpart Pranab Mukherjee in New Delhi, and the two leaders would lead their respective countries in a discussion of bilateral and global macroeconomic and financial-sector issues.
The discussions would be carried forward in greater depth in a number of working groups that will take place in the afternoon with a number of Indian officials and U.S. senior officials.
Mr. Geithner and Mr. Mukherjee are scheduled to address a joint press conference later in the day.
In the afternoon, Mr. Geithner would have discussions with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia.
The day is likely to conclude with a moderated discussion with Mr. Ahluwalia before an audience of leading public officials and business representatives, focus on post-crisis prospects for financial and economic reform, followed by a small dinner with Indian thought and opinion leaders.
On Wednesday, Mr. Geithner will travel to Mumbai to hold a roundtable discussion with U.S. financial companies and Indian entrepreneurs to explore successful strategies and business models being utilised in India to expand banking services to underserviced areas.
In his pre-trip interview with a group of Indian media, Mr. Geithner said “India is economically and strategically important” for the U.S. and the main purpose of his visit to New Delhi and Mumbai is to “establish a long-term” relationship with India.
“One reason I am going to India is to get a better sense of what is happening there — in the economy and the broad reform process in the financial sector. As always I am going to make sure that the leaders in India get to understand directly from me how we are managing our challenges here and how thing feel here,” he said.
“I think that in anytime we have these kinds of conversations with a major partner, we spend a lot of time talking about the basic economic challenges in both countries. In the India case, it is more important and a little different cause not just because India is so important to us economically and strategically but it is going to be important because we’re at a point in the broaden G20 progress, it is very important that the two countries work closely together in trying to set the agenda of reform in that processes,” he said.
There is a huge amount of promise in that framework for cooperation of international, economic and financial issues, he added.
—–PTI