Good afternoon, President of NICCI, Former Ambassador of India to Nepal, Deputy Chief of Mission of Embassy of India, Presidents of different APEX-level business organizations, members of NICCI and friends and colleagues. First of all, I would like to apologize for being late in this conference. As you know, managing a schedule for a public official in Nepal is very difficult.

There are overriding commitments. I was supposed to come here sharp at three. I normally manage my time myself, but things this time around, because the government also is interim, so you have a number of interim responsibilities, so that kept him busy.

I'm sorry for this. Much can be said about Nepal-India relationship. I, myself, got my highest education in India. That has brought me to this capacity, so we have historical relationship, cultural, business, economic, name any. So in terms of business relationship and economic relationship, India happens to be our largest partner in every aspect, exports or imports or power trade, which is going up. And as former ambassador said, that someday we possibly would be net exporter.

But I don't think so, because things might change tomorrow and we might consume more than what we produce, because the technology is changing, energy intensive economic operations are on the rise. So nobody can predict the landscape of the energy market tomorrow. But the good thing is that we have been trading.

There was a time, just about 13 years ago, I was part of a team trying to convince Nepal government at that time and politicians at that time that Nepal needs to conclude power trading agreement. And I would not be ashamed to share with you the discussion that I was required to defend, that if we trade power then we can't even take one bucket of water from our river. And I said that how can somebody stop to take one bucket of water from our river if we trade power with India.

So that was the kind of discussion at that time. Today power trading is normal, everyone accepts. So there are certain things in the relation between India and Nepal, which appears to be very thorny in the beginning, but go very smoothly in the long run.

So the key lesson that I am going to give to you is patience is key in having better business and economic relations with India. There are troubles oftentimes, we'll have to manage it. So discussion of this kind, as Ambassador said, B2B relationship is very important.

G2G is important, equally B2B also is important. So Nepali businesses need to work, build network with Indian businesses so that, you know I mean, to access Indian market also we need to know how the market operates. So that kind of B2B networking can be helpful.

So NICCI can lead in building knowledge base for better Indo-Nepal economic and business relationship. I have another program to attend to, so I wouldn't like to be late there, although I am already late. So I would like to be excused for leaving after I speak without even a courtesy meeting with a lot of colleagues I see here, without even a handshake.

So thank you very much, thank you for inviting to this meeting. I will be succeeded by my good friend and Minister Anil Kumar Sinha. So I hope he comes and attends the closing ceremony of the Nikki annual general meeting.

Thank you very much. Thank you.