As defence minister, he inked a game-changing defence pact with the US, as foreign minister, he signed the historic India-US civil nuclear deal and now as finance minister, Pranab Mukherjee is all set to put India and the US on the path of a “strategic economic” relationship.
This strategic economic relationship would not be of competition, unlike that with other countries, but would be complementing the growth and development of each other, officials familiar with the talks between the two largest democratic countries of the world said.
Pranab Mukherjee, who arrived here on Monday to attend the second annual meeting of the India-US economic and financial partnership, is all set to lay the groundwork for a new era of trade and economic partnership with the United States, officials said.
Though no formal agreements or memorandum of understandings are to scheduled to be signed during the day-long talks, officials asserted that the indications so far are that the talks could result in a path-breaking economic relationship between the two countries, following in the footsteps of what Mukherjee did to the India-US relationship when he was the country’s defence minister and then the external affairs minister.
This is the first time that an Indian finance minister is travelling to the United States with half a dozen top officials — governor of the Reserve Bank of India D. Subbarao, secretary of economic affairs R. Gopalan, secretary of financial services Shashikant Sharma, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Board of India U.K. Sinha; chairman of the Forward Market Commission B.C. Khatua and chief economic advisor Kaushik Basu.
In an unprecedented gesture, the Obama administration too has lined up its top financial and economic officials.
Led by treasury secretary Timothy Geithner, who spent most part of the first 20 years of his life in India, the other top US officials to attend the second annual US-India economic and financial partnership include federal reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Mary Schapiro, US Commodity and Futures Trading Commission chairman Gary Gensler, Federal Deposit Insurance Commission vice-chairman Gruenberg and National Economic Council director Gene Sperling.
“The comprehensive inter-agency representation on both sides makes this the highest-level economic meeting ever between our two nations, demonstrating the vision and commitment in both countries for ever-deepening economic partnership,” a senior treasury official said.
Ahead of the talks, Geithner and Mukherjee made a joint appearance at a panel discussion organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry and the Brooking Institute.
Geithner said the growth of India was not posing any danger to the United States.
In fact it complements the growth and economic development of the US.
Geithner later hosted a dinner for Mukherjee, which was attended by officials from both sides.
“We will discuss in detail how to expand relationship between India and the US and also the other issues on which we share common perception. One of the fundamentals principles of our relationship is that we share many common values,” Mukherjee said at the CII-Brookings panel discussion.