ASEAN, Indian senior officials gather at online 22nd meeting

Senior officials of ASEAN countries and India agreed to enhance cooperation between the two sides in various fields at their 22nd annual meeting held online on July 16.

Deputy Foreign Minister of India Vijay Thakur Singh said her country always attaches importance to ASEAN and supports the bloc's central role in the regional architecture.

India also highly values Vietnam's ASEAN chairmanship as well as effective guiding and coordinating capacity in promoting the bloc's efforts to overcome COVID-19-induced difficulties and challenges and in devising suitable orientations for ASEAN cooperation and development in the current context, according to her.

At the meeting, ASEAN and India agreed to step up partnerships in economy, trade, investment, maritime cooperation, terrorism and transnational crime fight, science - technology, innovation, disaster prevention and mitigation, climate change response, cultural and people-to-people exchange, and development gap narrowing.

They concurred in making efforts to achieve $200 billion in bilateral trade by 2022. (VNA/)

( With inputs from ANI )