India, Switzerland double down on trade, infra, and innovation ties
New Delhi, Oct 5 (IANS) India and Switzerland on Monday signed several MoUs to deepen their cooperation across sectors, including sustainable infrastructure development, exchange of young professionals, innovation, technology transfer, and entrepreneurship.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Swiss President Guy Parmelin held a meeting at Hyderabad House here to review the entire spectrum of bilateral ties.
According to an MEA statement, the agreement on the Exchange of Young Professionals (YPS) aims to govern the exchange of young professionals taking up temporary employment in the other country to enhance their professional and language skills within their field.
"YPS incorporates an exchange of 300 persons annually per country, which may increase to 500, and a timeline of 30/90 days for verification of nationality/residency status, among other provisions," the statement noted.
The MoU on the ‘Promotion and Collaboration on Transportation Technologies’ aims to promote collaboration in sustainable infrastructure development, with a focus on transportation and mobility systems by advancing technologies and infrastructure in areas such as electric vehicles, ropeways, circular economy, tunnels, and other transport sectors.
Moreover, a Letter of Intent (LoI) between the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) aims to promote long-term cooperation between the Indian and Swiss research communities by supporting exploratory scientific collaboration, building partnerships for future joint research, and establishing a broader framework to sustain long-term initiatives across mutually agreed priority areas.
Notably, the Implementation Arrangement (IA) aims to establish bilateral cooperation in innovation, technology transfer, and entrepreneurship by implementing the Indo–Swiss Academia–Industry Training (AIT India) programme for early-stage startups through bilateral exchange, joint workshops, capability building, and networking.
PM Modi said: "I am very pleased that we will soon be launching new joint research projects in priority areas such as health, clean energy, and space.
On October 7, India is organising a “Prosperity Summit” with business leaders from India and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).
"This summit will serve as a significant platform to transform the promise of our trade and investment partnership into concrete outcomes," said the Prime Minister.
--IANS
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