Need policy framework to secure sustainable Indo-US economic relationship:Shringla

There is need to develop a policy framework that could secure a sustainable India-US economic relationship, India's outgoing envoy in the US has said, reiterating that this is an important aspect of the growing ties between the two largest democracies of the world.

"It's a strategic partnership that we look to not for the next four to five years of an election cycle, but a long term relationship in which we must see a mutuality of benefits between the two countries, that have the same values, same shared principles and the same way of looking at how we'd like to see the rest of the world evolve," India's Ambassador to the US, Harsh Vardhan Shringla, said.

"In that one important aspect is the fact that we must look at ways to provide a policy framework and facilitation that could secure, a partnership and relationship on the economic side that is a sustainable in the long term," Shringla said at farewell in his honour by US Chambers of Commerce, and US India Business Council.

Shringla has been appointed as India's new Foreign Secretary and will leave for New Delhi next week. He has served as India's envoy to the US for about an year.

"We are happy that we are making very good progress on our trade package between our two sides. But, what we are really looking at is to engage in a long term framework under which our two countries can provide preferential or free market access to goods from each other's countries," Shringla said in his address to the members of the US corporate world having businesses in India.

Noting that there are a lot of complementarities in trade between the two countries, Shringla said they can open up windows that are exclusively for "our companies and thereby take our trade" figure from the current USD160 billion to double it, if the conditions are correct.

In her remarks, USIBC president, Nisha Desai Biswal, said that Shringla in a very short period of time became "a very important fixture" here in Washington DC, in the corridors of power in the policy conversations around the city and also across the country.

She said she has been struck with the tenacity and the enthusiasm with which Shringla approached his very broad and expansive mandate here in the United States in this role.

I also want to acknowledge the fact that you have been, open, direct and ready to engage across the broad spectrum of constituencies of relationships that you manage. While your main counterparts have been in the administration, I have to say you've been equally active with governors and mayors, with members of the Congress, with business executives and with community leaders, she said.

In about a year, Shringla visited 21 US states.

Ralph Voltmer, partner Covington and Burling and a USIBC Global Board of Directors said that Shringla has written extensively on conflict prevention and how to promote peace and prosperity among nations.

"Mr. Ambassador, your reflections on supporting an area of diplomacy are all the more relevant today as we sit here in Washington and see the potential for increased conflict, he said.

"I know your wise guidance and steady hand as Foreign Secretary will benefit our countries and our peoples as we navigate international diplomatic challenges in the years ahead, Voltmer said.