For Vietnamese version, please read here.
It gives me great pleasure to assemble here today with all of you to mark the 55 glorious years of our Indian Technical Economic Cooperation (ITEC) Programme.
Our choice of Da Nang City to host this event showsthe important rolethis City and its friendly people have played in making the ITEC programme so successful in Vietnam.
The ITEC programme, which originated in 1964, continues to be India’s flagship development cooperation initiative for capacity building and human resource development in partner countries. It is a fine example of the South-South Cooperation and is based on the needs and priorities of our partners.
It showcases India’s commitment to remain a steadfast and reliable development partner by sharing its own developmental experiences accumulated over seven decades as an independent nation.
Today, the ITEC programme proudly claims to have reached out to more than 200,000 beneficiaries in 160 partner countries and highlights the primacy of development cooperation in India’s foreign policy. It also
Ladies and Gentlemen:
With Vietnam, we have a long history of ITEC partnership. As a country with whom we have closely shared our developmental experience as a modern nation, Vietnam is one of our premier partners in this programme.
It gives us great satisfaction that over the last four and half decades,India’s development partnership with Vietnam has left a successful legacy of institution-building and human resource development. We are proud of the contributions made by these institutions and trained professionals in the national development and modernization of Vietnam, in fields ranging from agriculture to food security, economy to finance, history and culture to language, engineering and technologyto industry, and public administration to policy making.
India’s development cooperation and capacity building efforts with Vietnam are also in line with the important place that Vietnam occupies in our “Act East Policy” and the “Indo Pacific Vision”. It embodies our belief that our two nations’ prosperity and our people’s well-being are interlinked.
Our development partnership with Vietnam is not unidirectional. It is an exchange of experience and knowledge. As much as Vietnam has benefitted from the capacity building initiatives such as ITEC, these programmes have also given India an opportunity to learn from Vietnam’s own experiences and practices.
For example, from being a recipient of agriculture technology to a country whose agricultural productivity today ranks among the best in the world, Vietnam offers many valuable lessons for India in agricultural best practices.
Today, there are more than 1500 ITEC beneficiaries in Vietnam. Each of these ITEC partners in Vietnam is an indispensable bridge of goodwill and friendship between our two countries and our peoples.We would like their numbersto constantly grow to reach a much higher level.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
We are also proud to have partnered with Vietnam in launching a new initiative under the ITEC programme, called the e-ITEC. This new initiatives is based on modern tools of distance learning and covers cutting edge domains of new technology.
The first programme of e-ITEC has been launched a couple of weeks ago – onOctober 7, through partnership between two of our highly reputed institutions – theIndian Institute of Technology, Madras and the Vietnam National University, Hanoi – foran eight-week programme in Data Analytics and R-programming. Around 50 senior Vietnamese students have registered for this course. These are highly advanced subjects, and reflect our common aspirations to join the fourth industrial revolution built around new and advanced technologies.
Another new initiative we have launched is an offer of 1000 integrated fully-paid PhD fellowships for students from ASEAN countries in our very prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). ASEAN students can conveniently log-in to a portal to apply for PhD programmes of their choice at various IITs.
We are hopeful that more and more Vietnamese students, academicians and professionals will come forward to take advantage of these new initiatives, which is based on the spirit collaboration and partnership. The Embassy of India in Hanoi and our Consulate General in Ho Chi Minh City will be happy to provide all necessary details and information.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The ITEC, e-ITEC and all our other capacity building initiatives embody our belief that growth and prosperity of the world are indivisible and that India stands ready to play its part by sharing skills and technical expertise that it has acquired over decades of its developmental journey. We consider Vietnam to be a premier partner in this endeavor.
Before I conclude, I would like to thank all the concerned Ministries of the Government of Vietnam and all other agencies &institutions, who have partnered with us in making the ITEC programme a success story of our development partnership.
I would particularly like to thank the Government of Da Nang City, without whose active support, we would not have been able to organize this celebration today. We look forward to carrying the spirit of this partnership to achieve even greater successes in our future efforts.
Thank you!
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