Howard Calls Off Visit To India Programme In India
There was some speculation last week that Howard, who heads a Conservative coalition in the country, would be the chief guest at the `Australia-India New Horizons' trade promotion that is being backed by Canberra to raise Australia's low profile in India.
But the office of the Prime Minister has confirmed that Howard will not be going to India to open the `New Horizons' programme. It is being said that the Howard wants to focus on a visit by US president Bill Clinton to Australia in November, to be followed by the APEC summit in the Philippines in the same month.
I'm not surprised at the decision, Geoff Forrester, a former senior official with Australia's department of foreign affairs and trade, told the Business Standard.
Forrester explained that Clinton's visit to Australia was important to the Conservative government sworn in some six months ago. The Asia-Pacific summit in Philippines in November is also significant because the 18-member economic trade block will, not least, be discussing whether to allow countries like India, Russia and Vietnam in as new members.
Further, analysts say, Howard's first six months in office hasn't been the easy ride he had probably expected it to be: Public opinion in Australia is split on controversial issues as varied as euthanasia and the right to carry guns. Howard is also being criticised about the country's slow economic recovery by the media.
Forrester, a secretary-level official with the labour government of Paul Keating which fell in March, pointed out that a similar trade initiative launched by Canberra in Indonesia in 1994 had since had the effect of increasing trade by 30 per cent annually with that country.
We now speak of the promotion in Jakarta as a watershed in the bilateral relationship with Australia, Forrester said, agreeing that high-level visits of the prime ministerial kind are largely symbolic in nature, but also have the potential of catapulting a previously low-grade relationship onto the drawing board. India is an important country for Australia, Forrester said, pointing out the increasing economic stakes that Australian mining and telecom companies like RTZ-CRA and Telstra, amongst others, have in India.
The main objectives of Canberra's $6 million trade promotion in India beginning late October, are to enhance two-way trade and investment opportunities....project Australia's capabilities as a supplier of innovative and sophisticated technology and expertise...and a culturally sophisticated and tolerant society with a long-term commitment to the Asia-Pacific region.The draft prograrmme of the promotion goes on to disarmingly add that the initiative must take account of the less developed nature of Australia's relations with India.
Ministry of external affairs sources in Delhi openly talk of the low-key nature of the bilateral relationship, and say total trade according to 1994-95 figures is a mere $1.2 billion, with India's exports amounting to $346 million. Coking coal, wool and non-ferrous metals are New Delhi's largest imports. Canberra ranks seventeenth amongst the top twenty investors in India.
So far, Australia has chosen to focus its trade initiatives in the neighbourhood, launching similar promotions in South Korea, Japan and Indonesia. It has cited India's process of economic liberalisation and its huge middle-class of about 100 million people as major reasons for targetting India this year. Howard was also supposed to have attended a cricket match between the two countries in Chandigarh after he opened `New Horizons'. According to the `Australian Financial Review', Howard was also understood to have been worried that a trip to India to watch the cricket would not go down well with voters.
But it was a cartoon in the same paper that succinctly summed up the Prime Minister's mind: asked, when did you decide to cancel your trip to India, the cartoon shows Howard answering, when I found out Warine (Shane Warne) wasn't going.