New Delhi: Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong today pitched for India’s active participation in ASEAN’s new Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership to lend stability in the region.
Effusive about India’s rise in the past 20 years as an emerging economy, Lee said he discussed the issue of RCEP during his meetings with his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh and other ministers and urged them to take a positive decision with regard to this.
The Singapore PM asked India to join ASEAN’s new economic partnership.
“We want India to be partners in RCEP. I have been discussing this in my meetings so that India can be actively engaged in the region. India’s participation will enhance stability and add influence,” he told ‘Singapore Symposium’ here.
“We welcome you to participate in the ASEAN forum so that it will help keep ASEAN relevant,” he said. Asean’s new Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership will enhance India’s access to its market of 600 million.
He said ASEAN needs to be strengthened and all member-countries and Asian nations like India, China and Japan should help in this process.
To a question how the world will be in 2032, the Singapore Prime Minister said it would be “radically different” if India and China, whose per capita income then would be 5 to 10 times higher than now, engage peacefully.
“If the transformation does not take peacefully and if there is a fracture either because of economic reasons or strategic reasons and I hope not leading to military misunderstanding ending up in agrravation between America and
China or China and India, it will be a different world,” he said.
PTI
