Singapore-India ties to flourish under incoming PM Wong, says SICCI

As PM Lee Hsien Loong prepares to hand over (leadership of the city-state) to his successor, Deputy PM Lawrence Wong, we are confident that Singapore-India ties will flourish, said SICCI Chairman

Singapore's ties with India will continue to flourish under the leadership of the country's incoming Prime Minister Lawrence Wong who will be sworn in on May 15, the Singapore Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SICCI) has said.

"As Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong prepares to hand over (leadership of the city-state) to his successor, Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, we are confident that Singapore-India ties will continue to flourish, said SICCI Chairman Neil Parekh on Saturday night at the centenary celebrations of the chambers.

"This is all the more so since DPM Lawrence Wong co-chaired the India-Singapore Ministerial Roundtable, which has set the stage and the tone for long-term ties between our two countries," he said at the SICCI centennial celebration gala dinner.

Singapore President Tharman Shanmugaratnam was the guest of honour at the dinner attended by some 700 business and community leaders from the prosperous Asian financial centre.

SICCI is also a vital partner of the Singapore government in developing bilateral ties with India and its leaders.

SICCI's management gave inputs to fine-tuning the Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA) before the two countries signed the pact in June 2005.

Parekh elaborated, "An important aspect of the work of the Singapore Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SICCI) is to help Singapore businesses and fellow trade associations and chambers of commerce to deepen their ties with India, ever since the 'India fever' caught on during the tenure of then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong.

The chamber has organised numerous business missions in different states of India.

We have strengthened our ties with the leading business associations in India like the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) and the Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), he said.

In the past two years, the SICCI has been in the thick of jointly organising investment roadshows for the state governments of Tamil Nadu and Gujarat ahead of their Global Investment Summits, in which the chamber took part, Prekh added.