Dud MoUs with foreign nations under lens

The Cabinet secretariat has called a meeting this week of key ministries to review all memoranda of understanding (MoUs) signed with foreign governments which are over five years old but have registered little progress.

The aim is to decide if these should be kept alive. Attending will be top officials from the ministries and departments of defence, justice, electronics and information technology, posts, telecommunications, legal affairs and overseas Indian affairs. The secretary (coordination) in the secretariat will preside.

Those attending have been told to ensure their department is represented by at least someone of the rank of joint secretary, with knowledge on the matter. Departments have to prepare a detailed note on the total number of MoUs under their purview, which are over five years old, how many are inactive, new ones in the pipeline and their suggestions. Based on data from the ministry of external affairs, the Government of India signed 82 MoUs between 2005 and 2009. The countries include Mongolia, France, Germany, the US, Spain, Australia, UAE, South Korea and Britain. Another 130-odd MoUs were signed between 2010 till now. All MoUs need to be made into more concrete agreements.

China dominates with around 20 MoUs signed in the five years till 2009, plus another 12 since then. The subjects for the older MoUs are varied - traditional medicine, housing, land resource management, scientific cooperation. In 2005, for instance, the two governments signed MoUs on aviation, sharing hydrological information on rivers, building a temple in China and to have a financial dialogue.

A substantial number of MoUs were signed with Mongolia (four), Germany(five), US (four), Spain (five) Russia (four) and UAE (three) in the period between 2005 and 2009.