PM to inaugurate CII meet

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will inaugurate the 11th Partnership Summit of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) to be held in Kolkata from January 12-14. Sixty speakers from 27 countries are expected to participate.

While EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson will lead a team from the European Union, Patricia Hewitt, UK secretary of state, Trade and Industry, will lead a 20-member business team from Britain.

US Senator Jeff Bingaman will lead a congressional delegation on science and technology for the international event. An US team on intellectual property rights (IPR), including the US chief of patents and senior officials associated with patents in Sony and Oracle, would attend the three-day event.

The meet would also see representation from Oman, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar. Singapore will send a 33-member delegation and there will be strong representation from other Asean countries like Malaysia, Laos, Cambodia, Philippines and Thailand.

Minister and Secretary of State of Cambodia, Kong Vibol and Industry Minister of Laos, Onneua Phommachanh, would address the conference. Maqbool Ali Sultan, minister of commerce and industry of Oman, will speak about the India-West Asia dynamics.

Union Ministers like Kamal Nath, Ghulam Nabi Azad and Priya Ranjan Das Munshi and representatives of India Inc like Ratan Tata will also take part in the summit.

As will Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, chief minister of West Bengal, Tarun Gogoi, chief minister of Assam and Vasundhara Raje chief minister of Rajasthan.

The theme for the 2005 summit is 'Partnerships for Development' which will carry forward the agenda of the previous meets. The underlying emphasis this year will be two-fold.

First, exploring the development strategies and opportunities, which India and partner countries can evolve together, and secondly, exploring joint business and investment opportunities in the manufacturing sector, the services sector and the technological space.

The summit will also take a reality check on development. It will cover topics like WTO, Indo-British relations, India's competitiveness, world economic outlook, Asean and India, partnership with NRIs, India and EU, India and Middle East, India and the US, technology, women empowerment, role of patents in society and commerce.

Besides, there will be a special plenary on West Bengal. The session will examine the medium and long-term prospects for private and foreign investors, given the fact that the state is rapidly moving up the investment attractiveness chart.