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Posted: 1/1/0001
It will be Harper's first trip to India and his office has a jam-packed dawn-to-dusk itinerary that includes political, commercial, cultural and spiritual events.
He will, for example, visit the Golden Temple in Amritsar and, in Delhi, lay a wreath at Raj Ghat, the cremation site of Mahatma Gandhi. In New Delhi, he will visit Chabad House, the Jewish outreach centre that was attacked by Pakistani Islamist terrorists in 2008.
In addition to meeting Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Harper will also have a meeting with Sonia Gandhi, the influential chairwoman of the United Progressive Alliance.
'This is a very ambitious agenda for India,' said Dimitri Soudas, Harper's chief spokesman. 'There is a tremendous amount of untapped potential to the Canada-India relationship.'
A key focus for the trip will be improved trade relations with India, a country of 1.2 billion people whose economy is rapidly expanding despite the recession. Two-way trade between the two countries is tiny, at just $2 billion a year, but officials in both countries believe the time is right to increase that amount.
Officials with Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., for example, will be in India during the prime minister's visit as they pursue opportunities in nuclear energy production. Other firms, like Montreal-based SNC-Lavalin, will be there hopeful of winning contracts to help India build up its public infrastructure. Indian investors are keen to tap into Canada's energy and natural resources sector.
While officials with the prime minister's office would not speculate on the types of trade deals they expect to discuss, Canadian industry officials believe Harper and Singh will announce that the two countries have agreed on a framework for negotiations that could lead to a free-trade agreement. The two countries are also close to completing negotiations on a foreign investor protection agreement or FIPA that is a crucial first step toward new Indian