JK News Today
Jammu, March 18 India has made it in clearest terms that it did not halt trade with Pakistan and wants to move in normalizing trade relations with Islamabad.
Indian envoy in Pakistan Suresh Kumar , while speaking at a function organized in Lahore, by Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry on Friday , said that the diplomacy in the current phase of the world affairs has changed from compiling political reports to the newer focus on tourism , trade and technology , reported Dawn newspaper on Saturday.’
“India always wants better relations with Pakistan because we cannot change our geography,” Suresh Kumar, India’s deputy high commissioner to Pakistan, said while speaking at the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI).
“We want to move towards normal relations with Pakistan. We also didn’t stop trade with Pakistan, as it was Pakistan that did it,” he claimed. “It would be better to see how we can change our problems and situations.”
He agreed that the number of visas issued by the Indian embassy to Pakistanis dropped during the Covid-19 pandemic. However, he insisted that the number had now increased, as 30,000 visas were being issued every year, which he said was “a huge number”.
Mr Kumar said the Indian government was also issuing medical and sports visas to Pakistanis.
He said gone were the days when diplomacy used to focus on compiling political reports. Today’s diplomacy, he said, revolved around tourism, trade and technology “as money speaks its own language”.
India was presently doing trade of $120 billion with China, in which the balance of trade is towards China, he said, stressing that imports “are not always wrong and also have advantages”.
Mr Kumar said the intellectual property had become more important than physical property. “By sitting in distant countries and manufacturing in other countries, Europe is making money due to intellectual property rights,” he said. “Universities in Europe focus on technology.”
He said transit trade was extremely important as Central Asia was a big market and India needed access to it. Similarly, Central Asia also needed access to India.
He said India was on course to become one of the largest economies . “ Our service sector has grown enormously and now we are focusing on manufacturing , like automobile and electric manufacturing , he said .
