India, US ink a rash of trade agreements
Seeking to deepen Indo-US economic cooperation, the two sides, on Monday, signed a dozen agreements and MoUs, involving different Indian and US partners in the presence of Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Ambassador of India Meera Shankar.
These included eight agreements between US and Indian companies/institutions, facilitated by the Confederation of Indian Industry. While, HCL and CISCO signed an MoU to work globally in the area of homeland security, as also to jointly deliver security and surveillance technology solutions, Infosys and Microsoft Technologies signed an enterprise agreement for fulfilling the procurement and help in use of their technologies.
Further, CII and Santech Communications propose to work together to explore possibility of establishing Santech CII Centre of Excellence on nano-electronics. To promote collaboration on training of young people of different sections of society in value based leadership, a document was signed by Aspen Institute USA and Aspen Institute India. Three other important documents were signed by Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry.
These were MoUs with University of Texas at Austin to expand ongoing cooperation for commercialisation of Indian innovations by including capacity building, training of incubation centers and enhancing innovation capabilities of academic R&D institutions. Another MoU with Institute of International Education (IIE), Washington, to facilitate exchange of information regarding scholarships and fund options available for cross mobility of students, researchers and faculty, etc.
Third one third with Polytechnic Institute of New York University to promote Indian innovation capabilities in the US and to make available to R&D establishments in the Public and private sector in India the best practice in innovation from the United States.
FICCI also facilitated a MoU between International Institute of Information Technology (IsquareIT), Pune and Lawrence Tech University, Michigan signed a MoU with the purpose of launching MS level courses in the field of Automative Engineering.
