S'pore Edu Minister calls for close ties with India

Singapore, Apr 12: Highlighting the benefits of a close co-operation with India, Singapore Education Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam today said the city state has made it its mission to bring India closer to East Asia, Southeast Asia, China and Japan.

Addressing the opening ceremony of the two-day inaugural ''Connecting India'' summit, Mr Shanmugaratnam stressed on Singapore's ability to play a special role in generating ideas for India and its interactions with the world.

''The India-Singapore engagement has in fact been built on the success of good ideas. For example, the development of IT Park Bangalore and the proposal for CECA were new ideas in India in their time,'' he said, referring to the Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA) between the two countries.

Mr Shanmugaratnam also highlighted the success of a 36-year old Singapore-based Indian national, Vikas Goel, who won The Ernst and Young award for Entrepreneur of the Year in Singapore last month, and a few weeks later won the Enterprise of the Year award from among businessmen in the city state.

Through Singapore, a city with diverse multinational enterprises India can tap the ideas relevant to its growth and interactions with the rest of the world, and its social policy priorities, he continued.

Singapore's second way to add to India is by being a centre for international networking on matters concerning India.

''The Indian network is growing in Singapore, involving both the private and the public sectors,'' he said.

Institutions like Singapore International Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Institute of South Asian Studies Singapore were working with their counterparts in India. ''Connecting India'' summit was the product of collaboration between the Singapore institutes and several major business chambers that oversee different regions of India, he pointed out.

Lastly, Singapore can complement Mumbai to become a regional finance centre.

''Singapore's financial centre is well placed to be an extension of Indian financial markets - in corporate finance, in capital raising for Indian companies, and in wealth management especially for the global Non Resident Indian market,'' he said.

''Our experience in managing capital flows with an open capital account can also be of relevance and interest to India as it moves progressively towards capital account convertibility," said Mr Shanmugaratnam.

UNI