Myanmar president on 4-day visit to boost ties

NEW DELHI: Myanmar President Htin Kyaw will pay a visit to India from August 27 to 30 at the invitation of his Indian counterpart Pranab Mukherjee. This will be Kyaw’s first visit after the assumption of office by the new government in Myanmar in March 2016.

The two sides will hold talks on a host of issues to strengthen ties.

SECURITY COOPERATION

India shares 1,643 land boundary with Myanmar, besides a maritime boundary. The land boundary shared is with India’s four northeastern states. Indian insurgent groups have used the territory of Myanmar for long. The two countries will be looking at means to strengthen the security cooperation to counter arms smuggling, drug trafficking, smuggling of wildlife articles. India is also keen to allay any concerns over “unilateral hot pursuit of insurgents”.

CAPACITY BUILDING

India has been offering assistance in capacity building through assistance for the police force, anti-narcotic force, wildlife crime control force and disaster management.

CONNECTIVITY

The Kaladan multi-mode transport project (Kolkata to Sittwe port in Myanmar and then using Kaladan river to Paletwa in Myanmar and to Mizoram) and the IndiaMyanmar-Thailand highway are the showcase projects that the two sides are keen to finish at an early date.

STRENGTHENING DEMOCRACY

India has recently trained 20 MPs from Myanmar and has been stepping up cooperation with Myanmar in the areas of training for strengthening democratic institution.

“India is the country we should get best lessons from on what democracy means,” Myanmar President told visiting external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj.

NEW AREAS OF COOPERATION

Both sides agreed to work together to identify new areas of cooperation with potential. This includes areas such as agriculture especially pulses, power, renewable energy, skill development, health, education, transport and social development are the areas where two sides are set to step up the ties. LONDON: The UK government granted most number of skilled work visas to Indian profession in 2016 up to June, reflecting continued demand for their skills mainly in the IT, medicine, engineering and services sectors, according to official figures revealed on Thursday.

Indian citizens accounted for 57% of total skilled work visas granted (53,548 of 93,935), with USA nationals the next largest nationality group (10,019 or 11% of the total), the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said in its August quarterly report.

Visa terms have been tightened in recent years, but another indication of Indians taking up new jobs in Britain was the list of citizens of non-EU countries applying for mandatory National Insurance Numbers: Indians topped the list with 34,000 numbers issued to them.

ONS figures also revealed that Poland with an estimated 831,000 people born in the EU country overtook India as the country of origin of most non-UK born population in the United Kingdom. Indian students continued to give Britain a miss with the number of student visas issued during the year to June 2016 being 10,664. Once one of the topmost sources countries for students, India is now third on the list, after China and the US.

“There was a statistically significant decline in the number of non-EU citizens migrating to the UK to study, from 134,000 in the previous year to 111,000. Of the 111,000, 72% were citizens of Asian countries, though there was a statistically significant decline in citizens of South Asia, with the number coming to study having almost halved”, the ONS said.

With a net migration remaining at over 300,000, the figures continued to challenge the Conservative government, which is committed to reducing the figure to ‘tens of thousands instead of hundreds of thousands’.