Germany sees India as reliable partner: Chancellor Merkel

Berlin [Germany], May 30 (ANI): German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday said that her country sees India as a reliable partner. "Our cooperation goes back to 60 years and during our consultations, we have highlighted the fact that India has always prove to be a reliable partner when it comes to major projects here," Merkel said in a joint statement with India Prime Minister Narendra Modi here on Tuesday. She said that in the year 2000, India and Germany had agreed to have a strategic partnership and in 2011both sides had enhanced their strength and partnership by agreeing to have inter-governmental consultations. Chancellor Merkel added that both sides have been further able to deepen the cooperation in areas of research and education for example. "In the recent past, we have been focusing on vocational education and training and number of projects are being implemented and are going and when you look at the number of trainees in India they require some kind of training or further education in order to find a qualified job and secure job placement that is the area where Germany can perhaps bring its influence and experiences there," she said. "Today, we have witnessed the signing of number of agreements and declaration of intent, total of 1 billion Euros goes into development cooperation in areas like smart cities, renewable energy, established a solar partnership with India and its impressive to see the way in which India is speeding up the solar energy in its country," she added. Chancellor Merkel said both countries have extended and depended close bilateral cooperation in different areas. Chancellor Merkel said t she discussed with Prime Minister Modi about shaping the global order and also on the challenges being faced by India. "This year, we have closely been closely been cooperating amongst others also in topic that are on the agenda of G-20 , yesterday evening we had a detailed discussion for example the topic of terrorism, the threat terrorism possesses and we all suffer from consequences of terrorism," she said. She also thanked India for supporting topics that Germany has placed on the G-20 agenda. (ANI)