Minister for Foreign Affairs Pekka Haavisto will visit India on 4-6 November. Haavisto will meet the Minister of External Affairs of India S. Jaishankar and Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs Nirmala Sitharaman in New Delhi, informed the Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
A special item on the agenda is a visit to Chennai in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where Haavisto will attend the opening of the new production facility of KONE, visit one of India’s top universities IIT Madras and meet the state’s leaders. The minister’s delegation includes representatives of Finnish companies, universities and civil society organisations.
On the agenda for the foreign ministers meeting are deepening of the relations between India and Finland, regional issues, EU-India relations and strengthening rule-based multilateralism.
A special focus during the visit will be on climate change and Africa, to which both the EU and India have close relations that they wish to further enhance. Finland hopes that India would join the Coalition of Finance Ministers for Climate Action, founded on the initiative of Finland and Chile.
Social responsibility
The topics to be discussed with the companies include the implementation of corporate social responsibility and the business environment in India. Minister Haavisto will also meet representatives of civil society organisations.
“Finland’s political leadership wishes to support the international operations of our companies. In this respect the investments KONE has made in India are highly valuable and strengthen the view of India as an interesting business environment,” Minister Haavisto said.
“Education is a key to boosting development in a sustainable way. There is a lot of potential in research, innovation and education cooperation between Finland and India. Part of this could be targeted to research concerning climate change,” Haavisto added.
Possible areas of cooperation include air quality research and monitoring, where Finland has strong expertise, according to the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
