New Delhi: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman met British Virgin Islands’ Premier and Finance Minister Natalio D. Wheatley here on Monday.
Wheatley is leading a delegation of financial services experts to India and is visiting New Delhi, GIFT City, Mumbai, and Bengaluru. He informed Finance Minister Sitharaman that the aim of the visit is to expand the engagement of the British Virgin Islands in India, particularly in the areas of financial services, FinTech, digital transformation, trade, investment promotion, and capacity building.
She outlined that India offers a large and rapidly expanding market for financial services and investment and welcomed the possibility for engagement with the British Virgin Islands in the areas of mutual interest.
Wheatley is leading a 12-member delegation to India for the first-ever Virgin Islands (VI)-India Trade Mission from August 24 to 31.
Before leaving for India, Premier Wheatley told the media in the British Virgin Islands that India has the biggest population in the world and is home to multi-million and billion-dollar tech companies. In addition, India, he said, is full of heritage and one of the oldest civilisations in the world.
“The Caribbean is no stranger to India; we have many persons of Indian descent in the Caribbean, and they’ve introduced Indian culture to the Caribbean. So, it’s quite natural for us to want to establish a stronger relationship with India as one of the BRICS countries, as one of the up-and-coming countries in the world as it pertains to transitioning from a developing country to a serious world power.”
The primary objective of the trade mission, he said, is for the financial services industry.
“We do very good business in China, Hong Kong, ecetera, but we believe we could strengthen our presence in India. So, financial services are key.”
“It’s an opportunity to make friends formally with the Indian government, and we’ve already had engagement with one of their ambassadors right here in the Caribbean, based in Jamaica, and we had a wonderful exchange.”
(IANS)
