Remarks by EAM Dr. S. Jaishankar at the India-Central Asia Business Council

My very distinguished colleagues from Central Asia, ,
Shri Subrakant Panda,
Shri Vipul tuli,,
Ambassadors,
Distinguished Business representatives, Delegates and Friends,

Namaskar/Good day/ Dobryy vecher.

It is a great pleasure to join you all at the India-Central Asia Business Council. I thank FICCI, the organizers for their excellent arrangements.

Friends, the presence of Indian and Central Asian business participants in such significant numbers today is a sure indicator of mutual interest in forging stronger B2B ties between India and Central Asian nations. It is also a statement of the importance that business communities in all our countries attach to this Business Council. Today’s meeting seeks to discuss and explore new opportunities and complementarities between our respective economies.

Now, India’s trade and economic ties with Central Asia over the last decade have actually shown a very strong positive trend. Mutual trade was less than USD 500 million a decade ago in 2014 and I must tell you Mr. Panda, our numbers are a little higher than yours so what we have collectively is actually a trade volume which is almost touching USD 2 billion. However, this figure does not reflect the full potential. The need to address this is today even more urgent because of the uncertainties of the international economy and this requires governments and businesses to work together in tandem, which is why all of us are here in this room.

Now with that broad context, let me highlight three objectives before us. One, is to deepen the existing cooperation both in terms of volume and in terms of quality. There is already I think a recognition in each others countries and each others economies of the players and of the products. But, we must build further on that foundation and a very good example here is actually the pharmaceutical sector.

Two, we need to diversify our trade baskets so that all of us have more options and we have more competition and in a way we are looking for new opportunities and I would like our friends from central Asian economies to appreciate that an economy today which is in excess of USD 4 Trillion dollars, which is growing at 6-8% annually, it will create new demands for products, for services and even I would say in a way new demands out of more prosperous lifestyles, so there are many things we could be doing we should be doing which perhaps we have not looked at in the past. So this looking beyond the currently traded goods and services is essential really to envisage and realise new opportunities. And the third is that, we need to introduce greater sustainability and more predictability in our economic interactions and that means more long-term contracts and arrangements, cross investments, joint ventures and certainly sectors like energy whether we are talking uranium, whether we are talking crude oil even potentially gas, whether we are looking at mining, If you are talking about coal or if you are discussing fertilizers, I think these are all relevant examples to reach really long term understatings between us.

So How do we do this? And I have five solutions, here really to suggest:

(i) One we look at the Digital Economy & Innovation, I think Mr. Panda also dwelt on it, we are meeting at a time when E-commerce platforms, blockchains, cross-border digital payments are transforming the way the world interacts, trades and effects payments and India would be very happy to partner on platforms like the UPI, like Aadhaar, like DigiLocker with our Central Asian partners and certainly greater use of digital technologies and AI applications will help us unlock the full potential of our trade and economic ties and I would also add that It will be a great help to our tourists, to our students, to our medical travellers and I think colleagues this is something that we have discussed this afternoon.

(ii) The second solution lies in the field of Financial Services, and here I would say Closer engagements between our banks and financial sector will definitely strengthen our economic interaction. Some beginnings have been made in terms of opening of Special Rupee Vostro Accounts in Indian banks by Central Asian banks and there has also been some discussions about use of UPI (Unified Payment Interface), I would certainly support that very strongly as also the steps we could take to facilitate mutual settlement of trade in our national currencies.

(iii) The third which I referred to earlier is Healthcare & Pharma. Today, India supplies about 60% of generic medicines globally, and Pharmaceuticals certainly is one of our most important exports to Central Asia, but what we need to do is really to strengthen cooperation specially between our Drug Regulators and we could also look at covering medical services including hospitals, clinics and diagnostic centres, as also the supply of medical equipment and medical devices.

(iv ) The fourth issue of course is something we have debated for some years now, how do we improve our connectivity, because that has been a big obstacle , and I here talk about both land and air connectivity so what this means is more resources and effort in the INSTC(International North South Transport Corridor), greater use of Chabahar port will surely reduce travel distance and costs. We are discussing this under the Joint Working Group on Chabahar Port under the India-Central Asia platform. But I would really urge FICCI to look to discuss with its members and discuss with the other Chambers the central Asian chambers, whether how do we better address logistical challenges and present, if possible recommendations to us in the next few months and I should also add that we need to expand our air services and we need to create competitive environment for goods transportation.

(v) And fifth we need to streamline Transit Procedures. India and all the Central Asian countries, we are all members of the UNTIR (Transports Internationaux Routiers) Carnet system. FICCI is the prime nodal agency in India for this system. And every Central Asian country has its own Nodal Agency. So the question before is can we simplify customs procedures using the TIR Carnet to ease the flow of goods across borders? And again, can all the chambers get together and give us a consolidated roadmap or a recommendation in this regard.

So Friends,

In addition to all of this, I think you would agree that tourism, education, films, and cultural exchanges, these are all important, they should be tapped for their economic and business potential. I would certainly urge all the Chambers and their representatives to do more frequent exchanges particularly sector - specific business delegations. And we would welcome more inputs from the chambers we would welcome more recommendations how do we grow business and I certainly hope that we would get it in time because at sometime in the not so distant future we would like to see a Leaders summit between India and Central Asian Five.

Tomorrow, we will be holding the fourth edition of the India-Central Asia Dialogue at the Foreign Ministers level and we will deliberating on ways to further deepen our cooperation especially the economic dimensions of our relationships. I would hope that from the today’s meeting, from the deliberations of the business council very specific recommendations are made available to us.

I wish the Business Council all success and once again I would like very much to appreciate the fact that my counterpart colleagues from Central Asia have all taken their time from busy schedules and they have come here in time to participate at this council meeting I think that itself sends a very serious and a very positive message to all of you.

Thank you very much for your attention.

New Delhi
June 05, 2025