Gadkari for cooperation with Israel on water management

BJP President Nitin Gadkari today underlined the importance of enhanced cooperation between Israel and India in the fields of water management and high technologies. Talking to PTI on the eve of his goodwill visit to Israel, Gadkari said the scarcity of irrigation facilities is a serious challenge to food production in India, where 700 million people are dependent on agriculture for their livelihood .He said India and Israel signed a MoU in the field of agriculture in 2008, paving the way for setting up of six excellence centres covering production of vegetables and fruit using ultra-modern technologies in Haryana and Maharashtra and new projects for the use of saline water and drip irrigation in Gujarat and Rajasthan. The growing agricultural cooperation between India and Israel, the BJP President said, underlines the mutual capacity to develop, absorb and implement state-of-the-art innovation which will increase production levels at appreciably lower cost to the farmer and the consumer. Cooperation with Indian firms also facilitates Israel''s entry into the Indian market and enhances Israel''s access to other south Asian markets, he pointed out. He said that the two countries were at an advanced stage of concluding a formal free trade agreement for a two-way arrangement that would give Indian industries access to the Israeli high technology sector and Israel access to Indian domestic market. "This is a step ahead of the Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA) that a Joint Study Group (JSG) set up by the two countries had recommended to improve trade ties. It is estimated that bilateral trade would exceed USD 12 billion in 5 years with this trade agreement," Gadkari said. The current areas that need to be given focus are software, communication, homeland security, science and medicine, bio and agro-technologies, water and tourism and Israel''s water technology, the BJP president said.