The External Affairs Minister, Sushma Swaraj spoke today at the Regional Pravasi Bharatiya Divas celebrations in Singapore and informed the Indian diaspora there that as the trilateral highway project from India to Thailand is making considerable progress, New Delhi is planning to extend its connection further with other ASEAN countries.
She said, the partnerships in the entire South-East Asia region is on a high and added that the ASEAN region is integral to Asia’s success and to a possibility of an Asian century.
“Today 16 Indian cities are connected to Singapore, a trilateral highway project from India to Thailand is progressing fast and we plan to extend this further to connect India with other ASEAN countries,” she said.
Her speech highlighted the potential and promises in the defining partnership between India and South-East Asia.
Defining the trade agreement between India and ASEAN nations as most “ambitious”, she said that the strength of the partnership and the engagement between the regions lies in the clarity of the principle.
“The India and ASEAN future is full of possibility and also of enormous responsibility. Our north-east region will prosper when it is better connected to South-East Asia and when north-east becomes our pitch to South-East Asia, we will be closer to realize our hopes for India and ASEAN ties,” she said.
She further stressed on the need to prepare to tackle the common challenges in the region like, creating skills for the digital age, generating jobs in the age of disruption, meeting the need of rapid urbanization, protecting bio-diversity, making energy sources cleaner and pulling together the knowledge for productive agriculture.