Germany & India Mark Half Century of Cooperation

India and Germany have been cooperating on development work for 50 years now. This fact was celebrated in great pomp on Monday in New Delhi.

German Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul and Indian Finance Minister P. Chidambaram spoke of a success story which absolutely had to continue.

They said that Germany and India wanted to work more closely in the fields of energy, the environment and long-term economic development.

Finance crisis and climate change

Wieczorek-Zeul said the global finance crisis and climate change were two crucial reasons why industrialised nations had to cooperate with emerging economies.

“On the one hand, these emerging nations are highly-developed,” she argued. “As is India, but it is also a country where a third of the world’s poor live. That’s why we have to help these countries develop economically, using the best technologies and those which are least damaging to the environment. This is a central part of our cooperation -- namely to boost renewable energies, energy efficiency, to protect the environment and fight against poverty.”

“We need India and other emerging countries to support a new climate protocol and we need this climate protocol to make sure our world and the environment don’t go under.”

Economic growth has to benefit poor

The German Development Minister also pointed out that India could only develop further if the country’s poor also benefited from the economic growth.

This was why the German government wanted to boost its support for the Indian finance sector and especially the development of micro-finance, she added.

Financial services should be more accessible to poor and disadvantaged people.

Germany recently boosted its development budget for India to 360 million euros.