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Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman held a virtual bilateral meeting with United Arab Emirates (UAE) Minister of State for Financial Affairs Obaid Al Tayer and urged the Middle Eastern nation to participate in India’s ambitious Rs 111 lakh crore National Infrastructure Pipeline. About 7,000 projects have been identified under the National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP) with projected investment of Rs 111 lakh crore during 2020-25, reported a news agency .
“Finance Minister Smt. @nsitharaman held a bilateral meeting via VC with H.E. Obaid Al Tayer, MoS Financial Affairs, UAE. “Both leaders expressed respect for the long standing relationship between India & UAE, and the need to take it further in mutually beneficial ways,” the finance ministry said in a series of tweets.
During the meeting, both the leaders agreed to cooperate on areas like financial technology (fintech). “FM mentioned that with NIP, there are greater avenues between India & UAE to collaborate in the field of infrastructure investment. The leaders agreed to cooperate in area of FinTech especially UPI & RuPay card,thereby integrating financial transactions between two economies,” another tweet said.
The two leaders also agreed to work together in aligning the interests of India and the UAE in various international forums like the G-20 and International Telecommunication Union (ITU) for achieving common goals, it said. Addressing the nation on the country’s 74th Independence Day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said the economy’s main focus will be the creation of a pipeline of national infrastructure projects worth more than Rs 110 lakh crore.
“About 7,000 projects in different sectors have been identified. This will be a type of infrastructure revolution,” he had said. Stating that working in silos in the infrastructure space has ended, Modi said a large scheme to connect the country through a multi-modal connectivity infrastructure is ready.
