Namaskar; Zao Shang Hao; Good Morning!!

Mr. Hu Zhijiang, Vice President of China Sugar Association;

Mr. Hu Zhaohui, Director, International Department, of China Sugar Association;

Distinguished participants to the today’s Buyer Seller Meet on Sugar;

I on behalf of Indian delegation headed by Mr. Anup Wadhawan, Vice Minister, Ministry of Commerce and other members of Indian delegation have the pleasure to invite all of you for this very important event. As you know that the decks are cleared for import of Sugar from India, recently.

Today’s meeting between us has certain unique characteristics where China a leading producer and a major importer of Sugar; whereas India, the largest producer and consumer with distinction of being producing the wide varieties of Sugar and sufficient proven spare capacity to meet the Chinese requirements. Therefore, a close cooperation in the field of sugar trading is win-winsituation for us.

Sugar is one of the major crops grown by small and marginal farmers which are generally organically grown with limited usage of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The growing demands of high quality Sugar in China may it be for human consumption, intermediate product or for industrial use; India can easily be one stop shop for all these requirements.

During this BSM, the Indian delegation would be particularly interested to know the requirements of various types of sugar for the Chinese market, demand seasons; processing, packaging and labeling requirements; procedures and formalities which need to be followed for export documentation; and types of sanitary and phytosanitary checks needed at various levels. The Indian delegation would be also interested to get practical tips out of yours long experience of handling this subject.

In order to assist the Chinese companies / importers, we at the Consulate, are ready to expeditiously provide visa so that you may go to India for pre-shipment formalities and also to explore the various geographical regions producing sugarcane in India.

I urge all of you to have a free and frank discussion; understand requirement of each other; and work towards a strategy so that the import of Indian Sugar starts at the earliest.

In case the Chinese delegation present here are in the business of importing other food products and eatables; kindly share your requirement as we have the Managing Director of APEDA Mr. Paban Kumar Das, his organization has been mandated to export all kind of agriculture and process food from India.

We also have among us the Managing Director of NAFED Mr. Sanjeev Chaddha. NAFED is the nodal organization of India for promotion and development of marketing, processing and storage of agricultural, horticultural and forest produce, import-export, wholesale-retailing of food products.

I am sure that this meeting will provide business opportunities for all of you and pave the way for higher trade in agricultural products, particularly Sugar.

While working in China, we realized that for effective communication with the Chinese Audiences the Consulate should have a WeChat account. Therefore, we decided to launch it today in presence of all of you. This WeChat account has been developed by Fugu Mobile whose founding member Mr. Ravishankar Bose is with us. Now may I request Mr. Anup Wadhawan, Vice Minister to inaugurate the WeChat Account by scanning the QR Code. I would also request all of you to connect to us through WeChat.

I thank you all for coming to this event and wish you all a very successful meeting session.

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