Thailand Visit: Indian Premier Singh Pushes For 'partnership'

[webfact]

STATE VISIT
Singh pushes for 'partnership'
Supalak Ganjanakhundee
The Nation


Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra greets visiting Indian Premier Manmohan Singh at Government House yesterday. Singh arrived in Bangkok yesterday on an official visit to fulfil India

Indian premier voices interest in Dawei, plans to use Thailand to link sub-continent to rest of Asean

BANGKOK: -- In a meeting with Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, visiting Indian PM Manmohan Singh agreed yesterday to forge a "strategic partnership" to connect India with Asean via Thailand.

He said India was interested in investing in the Thai-promoted Dawei deep-sea port and special economic zone in Myanmar to help link nations on the other side of the Bay of Bengal to Southeast Asia.

Singh arrived in Bangkok yesterday on an official visit to fulfil India's "Look East" policy and enhance bilateral relations.

He and Yingluck also discussed bilateral, regional and multilateral issues yesterday.

A number of documents were also signed after the premiers' meeting, including an extradition treaty and a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on exchanging information related to financial transactions in order to counter money laundering.

The treaty and MoU are part of cooperation between Thai and Indian law-enforcement agencies, particularly those dealing with terrorism and transnational crimes, an official said.

An MoU on space cooperation as well as education were also signed.

At the meeting, the two leaders highlighted the enhancement of connectivity, which is aimed to link India to Thailand via Myanmar and other Asean members.

The connectivity should greatly benefit India's Northeast region as New Delhi is engaging in a joint development project of building a tripartite highway and upgrading roads linking its northeastern states with Myanmar and Thailand.

Highway links

Apart from building roads within its territory, India will also help Myanmar develop road links and bridges within the country, while Thailand has agreed to build a road link from its western border to Myanmar.

A joint working group on connectivity and infrastructure will host the next round of meetings to check on progress in June or July, India's Ambassador to Thailand Anil Wadhwa said. The project should be completed by 2016.

Singh and Yingluck also explored other cooperation possibilities in the Dawei project, as Thailand wants to promote it as a model for multilateral cooperation for Asean connectivity.

India sees the Dawei project as an emerging regional logistics hub as it will open a shorter and quicker sea route to major Indian ports such as Chennai and Kolkata.

The two premiers also brought up the establishment of a comprehensive free-trade agreement. Both sides have been trying to conclude the negotiations, but have yet to find common ground on the service sector. Moreover, India has expressed interest in cooperaton and investment in several other areas such as automobiles, space technology and bio-technology.


-- The Nation 2013-05-31

[geriatrickid]

The Indian government has lost out to the Chinese on several high profile trade deals in Myanmar. The Chinese were seen as being able to deliver on their promises of money and technical support to get thing done. Anyone that has work experience with India will understand why. The Thai government should proceed with caution when it comes to anything involving investments or joint developments with Indian government agencies. One can wait for ages to be paid by an Indian client and even longer to get anything out of the Indian bureaucracy. Why help India with logistics when India would only use the network to move its rice and manufactured goods that compete with Thailand.

Thailand shouldn't waste time on India, but should instead try and work with Myanmar because Myanmar has the resources Thailand desperately needs, especially oil & gas and young employable males..

[gtm2k]

The Indian government has lost out to the Chinese on several high profile trade deals in Myanmar. The Chinese were seen as being able to deliver on their promises of money and technical support to get thing done. Anyone that has work experience with India will understand why. The Thai government should proceed with caution when it comes to anything involving investments or joint developments with Indian government agencies. One can wait for ages to be paid by an Indian client and even longer to get anything out of the Indian bureaucracy. Why help India with logistics when India would only use the network to move its rice and manufactured goods that compete with Thailand.

Thailand shouldn't waste time on India, but should instead try and work with Myanmar because Myanmar has the resources Thailand desperately needs, especially oil & gas and young employable males..

Well, this is a typical stereotyped comparison being posted here !

Yes, indians are tough clients to deal with - but its also the "high value - high risk" proposition with them. I run a software business where a good majority of our products are high value. When indian clients invest in any our software products, it is known that the payment cycle would be stretched like a rubberband (but then it also gives us the opportunity to charge a premium margin for such clients).

As for resources - india is one of the few countries which invests in knowledge accounting. And the "knowledge levels" of an average indian graduate far exceeds that of myanmar and/or thai's put together.

[bigbamboo]

Still trying to flog Dawei then.

[thhMan]

Let hope India wins the service sector section.

[geriatrickid]

The Indian government has lost out to the Chinese on several high profile trade deals in Myanmar. The Chinese were seen as being able to deliver on their promises of money and technical support to get thing done. Anyone that has work experience with India will understand why. The Thai government should proceed with caution when it comes to anything involving investments or joint developments with Indian government agencies. One can wait for ages to be paid by an Indian client and even longer to get anything out of the Indian bureaucracy. Why help India with logistics when India would only use the network to move its rice and manufactured goods that compete with Thailand.

Thailand shouldn't waste time on India, but should instead try and work with Myanmar because Myanmar has the resources Thailand desperately needs, especially oil & gas and young employable males..

Well, this is a typical stereotyped comparison being posted here !

Yes, indians are tough clients to deal with - but its also the "high value - high risk" proposition with them. I run a software business where a good majority of our products are high value. When indian clients invest in any our software products, it is known that the payment cycle would be stretched like a rubberband (but then it also gives us the opportunity to charge a premium margin for such clients).

As for resources - india is one of the few countries which invests in knowledge accounting. And the "knowledge levels" of an average indian graduate far exceeds that of myanmar and/or thai's put together.

These investments have nothing to do with the use of Indian IT service contractors or the provision of similar services. Rather, it is about obtaining Indian government investment and support. These are two very different issues. The Indian government doesn't even have a secure common email system for use by its own personnel. Civil servants are using yahoo, gmail and Hotmail. It's a farce. The PM is not talking to the families that control Mitel or Tata is it?

The Thai government is getting desperate as it tries to attract investment capital. The ongoing inability to manage natural disasters, especially flooding, the ineptitude & corruption of the current and past governments compounded by the heightened political risk associated with Thailand discourages key investors from opening their purse strings. What Thailand needs are the infrastructure project investments associated with Japan, South Korea, the USA and Germany. India does not have a history of this type of investment activity. Indian government associated investments are focused on the short term, specifically the taking of resources back to India and not the transformation of those resources in the country of origin.

[Baerboxer]

The Indian government has lost out to the Chinese on several high profile trade deals in Myanmar. The Chinese were seen as being able to deliver on their promises of money and technical support to get thing done. Anyone that has work experience with India will understand why. The Thai government should proceed with caution when it comes to anything involving investments or joint developments with Indian government agencies. One can wait for ages to be paid by an Indian client and even longer to get anything out of the Indian bureaucracy. Why help India with logistics when India would only use the network to move its rice and manufactured goods that compete with Thailand.

Thailand shouldn't waste time on India, but should instead try and work with Myanmar because Myanmar has the resources Thailand desperately needs, especially oil & gas and young employable males..

Well, this is a typical stereotyped comparison being posted here !

Yes, indians are tough clients to deal with - but its also the "high value - high risk" proposition with them. I run a software business where a good majority of our products are high value. When indian clients invest in any our software products, it is known that the payment cycle would be stretched like a rubberband (but then it also gives us the opportunity to charge a premium margin for such clients).

As for resources - india is one of the few countries which invests in knowledge accounting. And the "knowledge levels" of an average indian graduate far exceeds that of myanmar and/or thai's put together.

I don't think this is purely a stereotype comparison. I've lived in India and appreciate that they are tough clients, who like to haggle. But they are also comfortable with lying and welching on agreed contracts when it suits. They see this as "part of the game". Getting money out of them is arduous and therefore the margins must be high enough to cover all that hassle. They will keep coming back mid contract to see if they can squeeze more; but hate it when you do it back. Sure there are opportunities there, but you have to be ultra cautious.

Your last sentence is ridiculous. Based on what? You're own stereotype bias? Many Indian graduates I've dealt with wouldn't reach "A" level standard in the West.

[Baerboxer]

Let hope India wins the service sector section.

Have you ever dealt with the Indian service sector ?

They have people with Master's who can't understand a word of English but believe they're fluent!!

I know a lot of organizations who outsourced service operations to India to take advantage of the low costs. Many didn't stay very long!

Edited May 31, 2013 by Baerboxer

[Tomtomtom69]

Developing road links between India and Thailand may take decades to be realized if Myanmar doesn't get it's act together. Firstly, there are no road links that need to be any further developed between Thailand and Myanmar - they're already there, however, the road links inside Myanmar have a long way to go. No idea what the infrastructure is like in NE India in Manipur and surrounding areas as I've only been to Kolkata but I'm thinking this is an overly ambitious plan that may never get to fruition judging by the shocking infrastructure in Kolkata (although numerous elevated road projects are currently underway). If this is to work, Myanmar needs to allow foreigners unrestricted access to all of it's territory i.e. all the major roads between Thailand and India and will need to upgrade it's highways and it's border crossings to international status. Similarly India will need to make major upgrades to it's highways between Kolkata and the Myanmar border, which most likely will have to pass through Bangladesh as going via Darjeeling, Guwahati and finally Imphal in Manipur would be too long. So essentially Bangladeshi co-operation will be required as well.

Until or unless these changes are made this whole push for overland access is nothing but hot air and won't ever happen. Meanwhile we will all continue to travel by air between Thailand and India and trade will continue to be shipped from Kolkata down to Bangkok or perhaps Dawei once the port there opens.

Edited May 31, 2013 by Tomtomtom69

[nachiket]

The Indian government has lost out to the Chinese on several high profile trade deals in Myanmar. The Chinese were seen as being able to deliver on their promises of money and technical support to get thing done. Anyone that has work experience with India will understand why. The Thai government should proceed with caution when it comes to anything involving investments or joint developments with Indian government agencies. One can wait for ages to be paid by an Indian client and even longer to get anything out of the Indian bureaucracy. Why help India with logistics when India would only use the network to move its rice and manufactured goods that compete with Thailand.

Thailand shouldn't waste time on India, but should instead try and work with Myanmar because Myanmar has the resources Thailand desperately needs, especially oil & gas and young employable males..

Well, this is a typical stereotyped comparison being posted here !

Yes, indians are tough clients to deal with - but its also the "high value - high risk" proposition with them. I run a software business where a good majority of our products are high value. When indian clients invest in any our software products, it is known that the payment cycle would be stretched like a rubberband (but then it also gives us the opportunity to charge a premium margin for such clients).

As for resources - india is one of the few countries which invests in knowledge accounting. And the "knowledge levels" of an average indian graduate far exceeds that of myanmar and/or thai's put together.

These investments have nothing to do with the use of Indian IT service contractors or the provision of similar services. Rather, it is about obtaining Indian government investment and support. These are two very different issues. The Indian government doesn't even have a secure common email system for use by its own personnel. Civil servants are using yahoo, gmail and Hotmail. It's a farce. The PM is not talking to the families that control Mitel or Tata is it?

The Thai government is getting desperate as it tries to attract investment capital. The ongoing inability to manage natural disasters, especially flooding, the ineptitude & corruption of the current and past governments compounded by the heightened political risk associated with Thailand discourages key investors from opening their purse strings. What Thailand needs are the infrastructure project investments associated with Japan, South Korea, the USA and Germany. India does not have a history of this type of investment activity. Indian government associated investments are focused on the short term, specifically the taking of resources back to India and not the transformation of those resources in the country of origin.

I am surprise to know that, you don't know about Indian govt. secure common email system?

It's: http://www.nic.in/

Indian government associated investments are focused on the short term, specifically the taking of resources back to India and not the transformation of those resources in the country of origin.

India till date, never hit by any economic recession. Thanks to RBI and Finance Ministry's bureaucrats who always design concrete economic policy for the nation. It doesn't appear to be facing the same degree of potential dangers and downside risks as China, which means policymakers in New Delhi might have a much easier task in maintaining the economy's momentum than their Chinese counterparts.

India isn't experiencing nearly the same degree of fallout from its recession and managed to achieve its substantial growth without putting its banking sector at risk. In fact, India's banks have remained quite conservative through the downturn, especially compared with Chinese lenders. India's growth, though less stellar, does have the reassuring factor that the (risks of) asset price bubbles are less. If your banking, insurance and finance sector is safe, your country is far more safer as compare to waste public tax money on unnecessary skyscrapers and glamourous infrastructure. On the other hand, India maintained robust growth because, it is less exposed to the international economy. And thus, India was afforded more protection from the worst effects of the financial crisis in the West, India's confident consumer didn't let the economy down.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, when speaking about our country's more plodding pace of economic policymaking, has said that "slow and steady will win the race."

The Great Recession appears to have proved him right.

Edited May 31, 2013 by nachiket

[Tomtomtom69]

geriatrickid, on 31 May 2013 - 07:26, said:

The Indian government has lost out to the Chinese on several high profile trade deals in Myanmar. The Chinese were seen as being able to deliver on their promises of money and technical support to get thing done. Anyone that has work experience with India will understand why. The Thai government should proceed with caution when it comes to anything involving investments or joint developments with Indian government agencies. One can wait for ages to be paid by an Indian client and even longer to get anything out of the Indian bureaucracy. Why help India with logistics when India would only use the network to move its rice and manufactured goods that compete with Thailand.

Thailand shouldn't waste time on India, but should instead try and work with Myanmar because Myanmar has the resources Thailand desperately needs, especially oil & gas and young employable males..

I was in Kolkata back in March hoping to find a company willing and capable of designing a series of processing equipment for a factory we plan to open in Thailand. I would have been able to supply samples, that would simply have been down-scaled to smaller capacities. A company in Kolkata was interested, but after numerous email exchanges and absolutely no action and more than a month of no further replies, I had enough. They didn't even have the courage to tell me they couldn't even get started. After another trip to Kolkata just over a week ago and numerous phone calls to this company, my dad also admitted that we better give up and now I will implement this project with Vietnamese partners instead.

I still have a lot of respect for India and it's hardworking people but time is money and I can't wait months before even beginning a project. We were there and wanted to get started but this company was dragging it's feet. I'm looking forward to my upcoming trip to Vietnam where we are expected to be successful.

[gtm2k]

The Indian government has lost out to the Chinese on several high profile trade deals in Myanmar. The Chinese were seen as being able to deliver on their promises of money and technical support to get thing done. Anyone that has work experience with India will understand why. The Thai government should proceed with caution when it comes to anything involving investments or joint developments with Indian government agencies. One can wait for ages to be paid by an Indian client and even longer to get anything out of the Indian bureaucracy. Why help India with logistics when India would only use the network to move its rice and manufactured goods that compete with Thailand.

Thailand shouldn't waste time on India, but should instead try and work with Myanmar because Myanmar has the resources Thailand desperately needs, especially oil & gas and young employable males..

Well, this is a typical stereotyped comparison being posted here !

Yes, indians are tough clients to deal with - but its also the "high value - high risk" proposition with them. I run a software business where a good majority of our products are high value. When indian clients invest in any our software products, it is known that the payment cycle would be stretched like a rubberband (but then it also gives us the opportunity to charge a premium margin for such clients).

As for resources - india is one of the few countries which invests in knowledge accounting. And the "knowledge levels" of an average indian graduate far exceeds that of myanmar and/or thai's put together.

I don't think this is purely a stereotype comparison. I've lived in India and appreciate that they are tough clients, who like to haggle. But they are also comfortable with lying and welching on agreed contracts when it suits. They see this as "part of the game". Getting money out of them is arduous and therefore the margins must be high enough to cover all that hassle. They will keep coming back mid contract to see if they can squeeze more; but hate it when you do it back. Sure there are opportunities there, but you have to be ultra cautious.

Your last sentence is ridiculous. Based on what? You're own stereotype bias? Many Indian graduates I've dealt with wouldn't reach "A" level standard in the West.

Well to support my ridiculous claim even further - here are some facts,

1. An average indian student is at least 3 years ahead in math + science in comparison to its western peers.

2. An average bright indian student has a cgpa upwards of 9/10 (thats over 4.0 in gpa scoring) - this is at the same a levels stage that you are bragging about.

3. Universities in india purely admit on merit basis. This year alone the brigtest of lads scored in the range of 97% upwards - that should give you an idea of how competitive is the education system - this directly translates into HR workforce and so on. This system is uniformly spread across the entire education sector.

4. Education is extremely light on the pocket , in comparison to the standards it provides.

Businesses in india eventually use this talent pool , again on the basis of merit - to further train candidates during inception.

If you are a teacher by any chance in thailand - you will realise that most indians here go back to indian schools for completing high-school - those who take this decision are prepared to take on cut-throat competition.

As for how the west stands - unless they decide to change the way they educate - they will be heading west - in the direction of sundown ! UK is an exception to this argument.

This is btw a good read - http://www.usnews.com/education/articles/2008/01/30/comparing-american-students-with-those-in-china-and-india

Edited May 31, 2013 by gtm2k

[geriatrickid]

I had a good laugh about the emails. The Indian press ran stories last year about the issue. It is nothing new. Unfortunately, I can't find the Indian article Here's an article that sums up the embarrassment rather nicely.

India Government Use of Free Webmail Criticized By Mehul Srivastava http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-18/india-government-s-use-of-hotmail-gmail-recipe-for-disaster-.html

India has a serious problem with corruption. The issue isn't the Indian people. Rather it is the nature of the government and the oligarchies that control commerce. As such, attempting to negotiate any investment deal with the Indian government is a waste of time.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ronak-d-desai/how-will-india-confront-i_b_2756670.html

Here's a study from KPMG which is a reputable accounting firm that sums up the Indian situation;

http://www.kpmg.com/IN/en/Press%20Release/Press_Release_Bribery_Corruption_Survey.pdf

Again, it should cause any Thai with some functioning brain cells to just steer clear of the Indian government.

[Thai at Heart]

Hooray. India to save daiwei....