The Hindu : CII's Indian expo opens in Kabul today

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Sep 26, 2002

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CII's Indian expo opens in Kabul today

By Alok Mukherjee

NEW DELHI SEPT. 25. Corporate India is all set to launch the first peacetime fair in Afghanistan. Opening on September 26 in Kabul, the four-day industrial exhibition will see the participation of over 170 Indian companies representing a variety of sectors such as automobiles, building and construction equipment and materials, machine tools, electrical and food processing machinery, consumer durables and health care products.

The exhibition would be inaugurated by the President of the Transitional Islamic State of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, and the Afghan Foreign Minister, Abdullah Abdullah. Other senior Ministers, Government functionaries and diplomats are also expected to be present.

The Indian delegation, numbering over a 100, would be led by the Foreign Secretary, Kanwal Sibal, and would include chief executives and senior representatives of various companies, Government organisations and the media.

Organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), the exhibition is expected to attract over 5,000 resident and non-resident Afghan businessmen and traders, not just from Kabul, Mazar-e-Sharif, Herat, Jalalabad and Kandahar but from Dubai, Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom as well.

The `Made in India Show' in Kabul would offer enormous opportunities to both Indian and Afghan businessmen to build partnerships as part of trade promotion. Indian companies would be looking at appointing dealers and distributors not just for Kabul but the whole of Afghanistan. According to the CII, the last time an exhibition was held in Kabul was in 1977 and to that extent, the event would be "historic", and reinforce India's commitment towards Afghanistan as well as the ruling establishment headed by President Karzai.

The venue for the exhibition is the Kabul Polytechnic Grounds, which was also the venue for the Loya Jirga held in June, when Mr. Karzai was elected President. The venue, in terms of infrastructure, is no less than the Pragati Maidan in New Delhi despite the fact that only a temporary structure was built by the Germans for the Loya Jirga through U.N. funding. The temporary hanger structure built over an area of 3,000 sq.m is pillar-less and well-equipped.

Coinciding with the `Made in India Show', the CII would be launching an Indo-Afghan Business Forum in the presence of the Afghan Commerce Minister, Sayed Mustafa Kazmi. While Arun Bharat Ram, chairman, CII-International, would be the co-chairman of this forum from the Indian side, Iqbal Rashidzada, president, Yahya Gulf Trading FZE, Dubai, would be the co-chairman from the Afghan side.

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