India offers $190 mn credit line to Tanzania
India offers $190 mn credit line to Tanzania
Dar es Salaam: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Friday announced a new $190 million credit line to support water supply and education projects in Tanzania.
He said India will offer $180 million (€126 million) to improve water supply in the commercial capital Dar es Salaam and $10 million in support of human resources development and education programmes.
“India and Tanzania have been working together for a long time. We should now revitalize our co-operation," Singh told a joint news conference with his host President Jakaya Kikwete.
Singh flew in Thursday from the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, where he attended a trade summit and offered a raft of measures, including $5 billion (€3.6 billion) in credit lines, to boost his country’s presence on the continent, where China has a serious head start.
Singh signed three agreements with Tanzanian officials, one to avoid double taxation on trade deals and two others providing respectively for India to help develop Tanzania’s small and medium industries and to build hospitals.
Kikwete said his talks with Singh also touched on potential new areas of co-operation and cited agriculture and manufacturing among others.
He said trade volume between the two countries rose five-fold in the five years to 2010 to reach $1 billion, while India’s investments in Tanzania reached $1.3 billion in 2010.
“Prospects for increased trade and investments are bright. There are a lot of investment opportunities available," Kikwete stressed.
The two leaders said their countries mostly take the same stand on international issues such as south-south co-operation, UN reforms and a fairer system within the World Trade Organisation.
Kikwete pledged continued support to India in its campaign to have a permanent seat in the UN Security Council, saying the Asian country deserved it.
“India has all that is needed to have a permanent seat in the Security Council. It is also unfair for the Council to have the same members as it had in 1945," Kikwete said.
Singh for his part said Africa also needed a seat in the global body.
The two leaders expressed deep concern over piracy, pledging increased co-operation to fight it.
“Tanzania has experienced terrorist attacks and of late pirates are making life difficult to our people," Kiwete said, adding that piracy has caused insurance premiums to rise and that this in turn is pushing up the prices end users are paying.
Singh and his delegation leave for home Saturday.
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