After successful visit to Qatar, Prime Minister Narendra modi made a visit to Switzerland to ask support for India’s Membership in Nuclear suppliers Groups and to raise the issues related to black money invested by Indians in Swiss Banks.
Switzerland is placed on the list of Prime Minister Five nation tour after Afghanistan and Qatar.
Agenda: To expand Economic and investment ties and to have discussion with Indian Scientists working at CERN.
Member in Nuclear Suppliers Group:
About Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG)
Multinational body aiming to reduce nuclear exploration by controlling the export and transfer of materials to nuclear weapon development
Prime Minister seeks the support of Switzerland to be a member
No of active Members: 48
Points Delivered by Prime Minister:
- Switzerland is the home for Red Cross and Headquarters of several international Organisations
- Joint Agreement in trade, investment, science & technology and skill development would benefit both nations
- President and Prime Minister agreed to set up the Swiss Vocational and Educational Training system to train the India’s youth
- Inviting the Swiss firms to invest in India vide FDI to benefit the whole world
- Reform international institutions
- Agreed to support each other for the non-permanent membership of the UN Security Council
- Fight Against the threat of black money and tax avoidance is also priority actions
Swiss back India’s bid for nuclear group membership:
- Swiss President Johann Schneider-Ammann announced his interest to India’s membership in the 48 member Nuclear Suppliers Group after exhaustive discussion with Prime Minister
- Prime Minister thanked the Switzerland Government and expressed his happiness on Swiss understanding and support
- The U.S. and NSG member countries have showed their positive feedbacks to impart India into the group, based on non proliferation record
- The NSG works under the principle of harmony and India will revoke its bid even one country showed negative sign.
India provides huge opportunity for Swiss business:
- India provide wider platform for Swiss business. Based on Swiss customs data, Bilateral trade was tripled from $ 1.6 billion in 2004 to $ 4.5 billion in 2011 which shows upright in trade and India’s merchandise exports more than doubled from 2009 to 2014.
- Switzerland is India’s fifth largest trade partner and 11th largest investor and Most of the Swiss based multinationals like Nestle, ABB, Novartis, Roche UBS and Credit Suisse have production offices in India.
To Scrub Black Money and bring justice on Tax Evasion:
- India has already been in touch with the Swiss government under the double taxation avoidance agreement (DTAA) mandate.
- Automatic exchange of information with Switzerland to scrub the black money and to award the justice for tax offenders.