The Commonwealth Secretary-General Baroness Patricia Scotland told a gathering at Marlborough House, London on Wednesday, that next month marks a “great time” for India and they will get a chance to have "very personal and direct" interactions. She also said the institution is looking for “opportunities” from Brexit and highlighted how trade between member states could be worth a trillion dollars. The Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) will be held on April 19 and 20 will be preceded by the Commonwealth Business Forum between from April 16-18, which will bring together hundreds of delegates from across the 53 Commonwealth countries, including the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
A Commonwealth Trade Review published that before the EU referendum had found that businesses dealings between the Commonwealth member countries was on average 19% cheaper than between a non-Commonwealth country, for reasons like a shared language and similar legal systems.
Speaking at the gathering, she told the press, "It is a great time for India and it is exciting to see the energised way in which new opportunities are being taken up.
"India has done a lot on innovation and in every ministerial Commonwealth meeting, we see strong commitment from India. In welcoming that strong commitment from India, I am so happy to see it matched by the other 52 countries and the south-south cooperation taking place.
"Looking at the opportunity, we have launched a small and medium enterprise network in India and we are hoping to have a branch of that in the Pacific, said Scotland, who hailed India as the biggest democracy with 1.1 billion of the 2.4 billion people within the organisation's membership landscape.”
Baroness Scotland also highlighted India's active role and "great generosity" during the recent Commonwealth education ministers' meeting in Fiji, where the country shared its Massive Online Open Courses (MOOC) platform for education, innovation and change with other member-states.
Speaking about opportunities after Brexit, Baroness Scotland added, “We are looking for the opportunities, accepting this is where we are. So now where do we go together, how can we go faster?
“I think one of the real issues is we’ve got the potential for having about 1 trillion dollars (£716 billion) worth of business in the Commonwealth.”
The 2018 summit will mark the launch of a new trade review, which will show that the Commonwealth is likely to miss its target of $1 trillion of trade between its members by 2020.
Richard Burge, CEO of the Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council (CWEIC), who will be leading the trade and business strand of the agenda said, "India is a huge nation, it is bound to have a huge impact with its incredibly diverse economy. It is a really knock-your-socks-off economy and we should be really proud of it as a member and take every advantage that we can.”
This year's theme of CHOGM is "Towards a Common Future". It is divided into four sections, including Youth, Women, People and Business.and it is focusses on building on the strengths of the Commonwealth.
