India, France to sign MoU in field of science and tech

India and France will sign an MoU in the field of science and technology seeking better cooperation between Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) of the two countries, during a summit which is to be held later this month.
The summit, which will take place on October 23-24, will be organised by Department of Science and Technology (DST), Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and French Embassy.
It will have 30 topics ranging from pharma to education, however, it will largely focus on cooperation in the fields of energy efficiency, aeronautics and water-management.
At least 250 delegates from France and 350 from the Indian side will take part in India-France Technology Summit.

"The large industries do not need any government support to do business, but its the SMEs that require government support.
"Innovations mostly happens in SMEs, so we are seeing whether we can learn from each other, develop new markets together. The Indian strength lies in skill and making it cost effective. The idea is whether we can do it jointly," said Harkesh Mittal, secretary Technology Development Board.

He also said that Technology Development Board (TDB) will launch a programme with BPI France where it will jointly fund the industries working in the technology sector.
"The French side will fund their industries while we will fund ours and joint commercialisation of these industries will take place. We hope to launch this programme soon," said Mittal.

"Developing technological partnership between India and France is critical. We already have a strategic partnership with India and this will be a new chapter," said Francois Richer, French ambassador to India.
He also stressed on building an eco-system for SMEs, research and development and higher education.
"There are a lot of industries who want to cooperate with SMEs in India. There are technology treasures in France which are yet to be explored. This will help in creating an essential eco-system," added Richer.
Similar such summits have earlier taken place to facilitate better technology cooperation between Israel, Thailand, Russia, Canada, Taiwan, the ASEAN block, Finland, Germany, Spain, Belarus and South Korea.