NEW DELHI: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi began a five-nation tour on Friday, heading to the United Arab Emirates before Europe, overshadowed by energy and supply-chain worries due to the Iran war.<\/p>\n
Disruptions around Gulf shipping routes and the Strait of Hormuz continue to drive volatility in oil and gas markets, increasing pressure on energy-importing economies, including India.<\/p>\n
But the trip also reflects India\u2019s wider effort to diversify economic and strategic partnerships while positioning itself as a major manufacturing and technology hub.<\/p>\n
The six-day trip, which will include visits to the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway and Italy, comes after India and the European Union sealed a free trade agreement in January, dubbed by Modi as the \u201cmother of all deals.\u201d<\/p>\n
The EU has long eyed India \u2014 the world\u2019s most populous nation \u2014 as a key market.<\/p>\n
Modi\u2019s visit will \u201cdeepen India\u2019s partnership with Europe… particularly trade and investment ties in light of the recently concluded India-EU FTA,\u201d New Delhi\u2019s foreign ministry said.<\/p>\n
Modi is also attending a Nordic summit in Oslo on his first visit to Norway \u2014 and the first by an Indian prime minister in 43 years \u2014 which commentators said shows growing engagement with Northern Europe.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor India, an engagement with the Nordic countries is strategically timed to position the country as a trusted economic, technological and clean energy partner in a rapidly changing global order,\u201d Anil Wadhwa, a retired Indian ambassador including to Italy and Poland, told AFP.<\/p>\n
\u201cIndia stands to benefit from the diversification from China, and the recently concluded India-EU free trade agreement has already created momentum,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NEW DELHI: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi began a five-nation tour on Friday, heading to the United Arab Emirates before Europe, overshadowed by energy and supply-chain worries due to the Iran war. Disruptions around Gulf shipping routes and the Strait of Hormuz continue to drive volatility in oil and gas markets, increasing pressure on energy-importing …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":97796,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97778"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97798,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97778\/revisions\/97798"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}