JAIPUR, India: India is seeking greater trade engagement with the Gulf Cooperation Council, its commerce minister told Arab News on Thursday, as delegates gathered for the G20 Trade and Investment Ministerial Meeting.
Held under India’s G20 presidency in the northern city of Jaipur, the meeting, which takes place from Aug. 24-25, is expected to feature talks on World Trade Organization reforms, and ongoing challenges to global trade logistics, investment, and integration of micro, small and medium enterprises into world commerce.
The Saudi delegation is led by Commerce Minister Majid bin Abdullah Al-Qasabi, who held a bilateral meeting with his Indian counterpart Piyush Goyal ahead of the summit.
“It was a very, very useful engagement,” Goyal said. “A lot of decisions have been made, about which you will hear in the days to come.”
While Saudi Arabia is a member of the G20, India has invited to the ministerial meeting delegates from the UAE, Oman and Egypt, which are not G20 states.
Their presence is seen as reflecting New Delhi’s growing ties with Arab countries, which are India’s largest trading partner, with the volume of bilateral trade exceeding $240 billion during the financial year 2022-23.
The bulk of India’s trade has been with GCC countries, especially the UAE, with which New Delhi signed a free trade pact last year, and with Saudi Arabia.
“We have large investments coming from GCC countries,” Goyal said.
“Our relations with the Middle East (countries) are on the growth trajectory. We are in dialogue with many of the GCC countries, Middle Eastern countries, for greater engagement in trade and furthering the shared interests of prosperity for both the region and India.”
The minister was expecting the two-day summit to conclude on Friday, with various agreements in place.
“I have the confidence looking at the first session this morning that we will all be able to agree on a broad consensus on all trade-related issues,” he said.
“There’s been significant progress in the deliberations at various levels to come up with a strong outcome document.”
India seeks greater engagement with GCC after G20 commerce meeting
https://arab.news/6nfxk
India seeks greater engagement with GCC after G20 commerce meeting
- G20 Trade and Investment Ministerial Meeting held in Jaipur
- Arab nations are the country’s largest trading partner
Storms spark travel mayhem and power cuts in northern Europe
- Some 50 flights were canceled in London’s Heathrow airport, affecting thousands of passengers
- In France, Goretti cut power to some 380,000 homes, most of them in the northern Normandy region
CHERBOURG, France: Gale-force winds and storms barrelled through northern Europe on Friday, disrupting air and rail travel and cutting power to hundreds of thousands in freezing temperatures.
Some 50 flights were canceled in London’s Heathrow airport, affecting thousands of passengers, with air travel disrupted across Europe from the Czech Republic to Moscow.
Forecasters from Britain to Germany urged people to stay indoors as they issued weather warnings, including the rare, highest-level red wind alert for the British Isles of Scilly and Cornwall in southwestern England.
All trains were canceled in Cornwall on Friday.
Some 57,000 homes in the UK remained without electricity, according to the National Grid energy provider, after Storm Goretti brought strong winds and heavy snow to parts of the country overnight.
More than 250 schools remained closed across Scotland, which has struggled through bad weather for much of the first week back after the Christmas break.
In France, Goretti cut power to some 380,000 homes, most of them in the northern Normandy region, the Enedis power provider said.
Overnight, gusts of up to 216 kilometers per hour (134 miles per hour) were registered in France’s northwestern Manche region, authorities said.
The winds felled trees with at least one crashing on residential buildings in France’s Seine-Maritime region, without injuries, authorities said.
Gusts of up to 160 kph lashed England and Wales with the Met Office forecasting agency warning of “very large waves” bringing “dangerous conditions to coastal areas.”
It also issued an amber snow warning in Wales, central England and parts of northern England, predicting snow of up to 30 centimeters (11 inches) in some areas.
More than 10 people have died in weather-related accidents this week across Europe.
The latest deaths were reported by Turkish media, where five people were killed.
While two were killed in separate accidents involving dislodged roof tiles, a Syrian man died when a wall fell on him, a construction worker was swept into the Aegean Sea and a pensioner fell off a roof.
- Schools out -
Schools remained shut in parts of northern France, where weather alerts have been issued in 30 other regions.
Giant waves crashed over harbor walls across France’s far northwest overnight, and as the storm moved eastwards it brought flooding and forced the closure of roads and ports including Dieppe.
Northern Germany faced severe disruption from heavy snow and high winds brought by Storm Elli, with schools ordered closed in the cities of Hamburg and Bremen and long-distance rail services canceled.
Some 600 schools were closed in Moldova until next Monday and around 1,000 homes were without electricity in Romania.
Floodwaters were meanwhile receding in parts of the Balkans on Friday after heavy snowfall and torrential downpours earlier in the week triggered hundreds of evacuations across several countries and killed at least two people.
In Albania, one of the hardest-hit in the region, Prime Minister Edi Rama said authorities were beginning to count the cost of flooding after hundreds of homes were inundated primarily in the south.
But weather warnings for icy conditions and snowfall remained in effect across most of the region, including Serbia, where parts of the west have been without power for days after a snowstorm knocked out power lines.
