The US-India Business Council (USIBC) has announced its support for the Atlantic Council Global Energy Forum to be held in Abu Dhabi next month. This will bring India into the ambit of the premier international gathering of government, industry and thought leaders in the sphere of energy for the fourth year in a row.

With this announcement, India will also be associating itself in a new role with the Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week (ADSW) a global platform for accelerating the world’s sustainable development.

Simultaneously, US-Bangladesh Working Group, a sister organisation of the USIBC, also proclaimed its support for the Abu Dhabi conclave.

Three Indian speakers have so far confirmed their participation in this important conference on the geopolitics of energy transformation that will set the energy agenda for the year and examine the geo-economic implications of a changing energy system.

The speakers with India connections, who have so far confirmed attendance are Amit Bhandari, Fellow, Energy and Environment Studies Programme, Gateway House, a leading think tank in Mumbai; Arunabha Ghosh, a member of the Environment Pollution Control Authority for India’s National Capital Region and an architect of the International Solar Alliance; and Nandita Parshad, Managing Director of the Sustainable Infrastructure Group at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

More speakers from India are expected to be added to the list. From Bangladesh, a distinguished speaker will be Tawfiq-e Elahi Chowdhury, Energy Adviser to the Prime Minister of Bangladesh.

This will be the fourth edition of the annual Atlantic Council Global Energy Forum.

The USIBC said, “The 2020 forum will emphasise South and South East Asia as a growing energy demand centre and focus on three key themes: the role of the oil and gas industry in the energy transition, financing the future of energy and interconnections in a new era of geopolitics.”

The USIBC was created in 1975 at the initiative of the US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and has since become the primary vehicle to promote and foster trade and economic ties between the US and India, and occasionally with third countries, as in this case with the UAE.

It has offices in New Delhi and in Washington.

Meanwhile the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh has announced plans for developing economic relations with the Arabian Gulf countries.

The state government will organise a ‘Mini-Investors’ Meet’ next year in the state capital Bhopal, which will be exclusively focused on enhancing investment ties with the Gulf.

This was announced in a report on the outcome of the state’s Chief Minister Kamal Nath’s recent visit to Saudi Arabia and Dubai in November.

The state has confirmed plans for increased business ties with Dubai following the chief minister’s visit.

In October this year, Madhya Pradesh hosted the Kamal Nath government’s first big investors’ meet in the city of Indore with the theme ‘Magnificent Madhya Pradesh.’

Nath’s trip to Dubai was the outcome of deliberations at this investors’ conclave.

The Chief Minister’s extensive meetings with officials and entrepreneurs in Dubai and with ministers in Saudi Arabia have now led to the idea of smaller conclave solely devoted to investments in and from the Gulf. Nath was elected Chief Minister a year ago.

In the report on his Gulf initiative, Nath promised to take his state “to the next level from merely producing commodities to producing goods and services by processing commodities, harnessing the potential of local people and leveraging the location advantage that the state offers.”

The report reiterated plans that the Chief Minister and his delegation discussed in Dubai for a logistics park and a dry port in Madhya Pradesh, proposals for air-linking Indore with Dubai, a hyperloop-based cargo system among the cities of Indore, Bhopal and Jabalpur as well as feasibility of an information technology unit near Bhopal by a private sector entity from Dubai.

WAM