Qatar Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani will travel to India on a two-day official visit on March 24.
During his visit to India, Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani will hold bilateral talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
According to reports, the Emir will be accompanied by a high-level delegation of Qatari Ministers, as well as captains of industry.
Ministry of External Affairs official spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin said that India and Qatar will look to increase commercial and economic exchanges, with special focus on the ‘Make in India’ initiative as well as the upcoming 2022 FIFA World Cup, which will be hosted by Qatar.
“India and Qatar enjoy close and friendly relations. Our ties are anchored in commercial and economic exchanges, as well as people to people contact. Approximately six lakh Indian nationals work in various capacities in Qatar and are the largest expatriate community there. Also Qatar is the largest source of our LNG imports, with 86 percent of our LNG imports coming from that nation. Our trade, heavily weighted in favour of Qatar, is around USD 16 billion,” Akbaruddin said.
“The discussion in the meeting of our leaders will focus on investment opportunities from Qatar to India, especially in light of the ‘Make in India’ programme, as well as possible Indian opportunities for engineering procurement construction opportunities in light of major infrastructural projects that they are undertaking keeping in mind the FIFA World Cup 2022. We would be signing several agreements, broadly in working out a legal architecture to ensure people-to-people flow between India and Qatar are regulated in a manner that is in accordance with international law,” he added. (ANI)