“Development through Partnership with ASEAN & BIMSTEC Countries”
13-14 March 2015, New Delhi
The North East Business Summit is a joint event of the Department of Development of the North Eastern Region (DoNER), Government of India, and the Indian Chamber of Commerce, to showcase the strengths of the Northeastern region and to present significant business opportunities. The Chamber, recognised by the Ministry of DoNER as the designated Chamber for the North-East, has been able to facilitate investments through the North East Business Summit over the last 9 years.
This 10th edition of NEBS has put in the effort to bring together the representatives of ASEAN & BIMSTEC countries to dwell upon the different aspects of economic engagement with NE India and these countries as well as to find out a way to remove constraints & bottlenecks to economic prosperity.
Prominent Speakers of NEBS 2015:
- H.E. Mr. Lyonpo Tandin Wangchuk, Hon’ble Minister, Ministry of Health, Royal Govt. of Bhutan
- H.E. Mr Aung Zan, Hon’ble Minister, Ministry of Planning & Economy, Mandalay Region, Myanmar
- H.E. Mr Alhaz Amir Hossain Amu, Hon’ble Minister, Ministry of Industries, Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh
- H.E. U Thar Aye, Chief Minister, Sagaing Region, Myanmar
- Mr. P Ashok Gajapathi Raju, Hon’ble Minister, Ministry of Civil Aviation, Government of India
- Mr. Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu, Hon’ble Minister, Ministry of Railways, Government of India
- Mr. Kiren Rijiju, Hon’ble Minister of State for Home Affairs, Government of India
- Dr. Jitendra Singh, Hon’ble Minister of State (IC), Ministry of DoNER, GOI
- Mr. George Sibley, Minister Counselor for Economic, Environment, Science & Technology Affairs, U.S. Embassy, New Delhi
- Mr. Rajat Nag, Chair, ICC Look East Council & Former Group MD, ADB
- Mr. M. P. Bezbaruah, Hon’ble Member, North Eastern Council
- Dr. R. Vijaykumar, Secretary, DoNER, Government of India
- Mr. Anil Wadhwa, IFS, Secretary East, Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India
- Mr. A. M. Singh, Joint Secretary, Ministry of DoNER, Government of India
Key Take-aways:
- Need to encourage regional value chain.
- Connectivity, both hardware & software, is necessary for greater regional cooperation.
- Appropriate marketing efforts across the country and also to nearby countries to promote the exotic destinations of North East by way of scaling up the local festivals of this region, encouraging home-stays, visa on arrival facilities etc.
- To enhance the connectivity issue by introducing small aircraft services within NE States and also connecting the SE Asian countries.
- Reference should be taken from the successful model of better cooperation between Government and Private stake-holders which led to tremendous spurt in Tourism in Malaysia.
- Multi-Skilling Institutes to be introduced especially for NE states.
- Higher Education should be connected with Apprenticeship. Work based learning will lead the career-pathways.
- Skilling should be attractive, relevant and serve the demand to address the major challenge of migration. New Policy is to put prime focus on how to consolidate all efforts in Skill Development.
- Micro irrigation should be the key activity in North East.
- High priority to Tea export from NE region by Government of India, with a special thrust on organic tea.
- To promote cultivation and collection of medicinal plants maintaining quality standards and certification of products with localized processing.
- Development of multi modal transport mechanism between all the north east & neighboring states essential.
- There is a need for bypass road and also a bridge to be connected to Moreh, the gateway to entire South East Asian countries.
- NE alone has 40% capacity of hydel power. Out of the 62000 MW potential, only 2.8% has been utilized & 90% is still untapped. This requires huge investments.
- Quality of power needs improvement. Rational and periodic billing towards power consumption is important. Commercial losses will fall drastically due to prepaid metering.
- For financial inclusion, technology has a major role to play and the technology aspect is low in NE. Bank branches have to be technology enabled. Mobile Banking could be the future in NE.
- There is a pre-dominance of cash economy in NE and financial literacy is also lacking in this region. Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojna will prove to be a game changer in NE.
