In Switzerland, officials are expecting that the visit will give an impetus to the process of exchanging information on black money stashed in Swiss banks.
A whirlwind tour will take Prime Minister Narendra Modi to five countries in five days, ahead of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) meeting in South Korea later this month. The PM, who is beginning his tour from the Afghan city of Herat on Saturday, will visit Qatar, Switzerland, United States and Mexico. Besides official engagements, he will interact with business leaders in these countries to explain how the government has made it simpler and easier to invest and to business in India.
In Switzerland, officials are expecting that the visit will give an impetus to the process of exchanging information on black money stashed in Swiss banks. They draw confidence from the Swiss Federal Council's recent proceedings on the revision of the Tax Administrative Assistance Act, which provides for easing of Swiss practices with regard to data on tax evaders.
The Opposition often takes jibe at the PM for his election promise of bringing back black money from abroad. Any assurance from Swiss authorities would help him boost his government's profile back home. India has been looking into 782 names taken from a list of HSBC Bank clients given to foreign authorities by the former employee, Hervé Falciani, who worked at the bank's Geneva branch. But despite pressure from India, Switzerland has so far rejected requests for banking information. "His programme in Switzerland on Monday begins with a meeting with the President of the Swiss Confederation Johann Schneider-Ammann, followed by a business meeting," said the foreign secretary Subramanyam Jaishankar.
In Switzerland, United States and Mexico, PM's specific agenda will be to seek support for the membership of NSG. The grouping is meeting later this month in South Korea to discuss India's membership. India applied the membership on May 12. Only members of this grouping can alone export nuclear technology or fuel. Pakistan, banking on the support of China also applied for the membership, on May 19. Though, the US has been batting for India's membership, Modi needs to convince Mexico and Switzerland – both of which have strong reservations about granting membership to countries which have not signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT).
Modi's first stopover in Afghanistan, the country he will be visiting for the second time in six months, is aimed at conveying the message to Pakistan that India will continue to remain engaged in the war-torn country. He will inaugurate a dam with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in western Herat district close to the Iran border which was built with Indian assistance.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani (centre) arrives in Herat on Friday, a day before inauguration of the Salma Hydroelectric Dam.
In the United States, besides holding bilateral talks with President Barack Obama, he will meet with heads of American think tanks and also supervise a function involving repatriation of cultural property, basically Indian antiquities, which are in the US. The high point of his visit is delivering an address to the joint meeting of the Congress and a reception jointly hosted by the House and Senate Committees on Foreign Relations and the India Caucus.
Jaishankar said the prime minister would be on in Mexico City in the afternoon of June 8 where he would have a meeting with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto. The visit to this Latin American country attains significance as the country had launched a Made in Mexico campaign all through 70s. Modi's ambitious Make in India programme is on similar lines. The campaign made Mexico a manufacturing hub. The country is right now 11th largest economy in the world. In 1980, Mexican trade was 17%, which has now grown to 61% of its GDP. With $400 billion exports a year, 50% of which are high-tech equipment, Mexico is one country, officials here say, India can emulate.
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