Your Excellency- President Biden,
I thank you for taking this Summit initiative on the important subject of supply chain resilience. As soon as you took over, you said, "America is back”. And in such a short time, we are all seeing this happening, and therefore, I would say, Welcome Back!
Excellencies,
In the initial months of the pandemic, we all felt the shortage of raw materials to produce vaccines, health equipment and essential medicines. Now that the world is gearing up for economic recovery, the supply problems of semiconductors and other commodities are coming in the way of healthy growth. Who in the world thought there would ever be a shortage of shipping containers?
Excellencies,
India has accelerated the export of vaccines to improve the global supply of vaccines. We are also working with our Quad partners to supply better and affordable Covid-19 vaccine in the Indo-Pacific region. India is gearing up to produce 5 billion COVID vaccine doses for the world next year. It is also very important that there is no hindrance in the supply of raw material.
Excellencies,
I believe that three aspects are most important to improve global supply chains – Trusted Source, Transparency and Time-Frame. It is necessary that our supply must be from Trusted Sources. It is also important for our shared security. Trusted sources must be such that they do not have a reactive tendency so that the supply chain is protected from a tit for tat approach. For the reliability of the supply chain, it is also necessary that there must be transparency in it. Due to lack of transparency, today we are seeing that many companies in the world are facing the shortage of small things. If there is no timely supply of essential things, it may lead to bigger losses. We have clearly realized this in pharma and medical supplies in the Corona times. So to ensure supply within a time-frame, we have to diversify our supply chains. And for this, alternative manufacturing capacity will have to be developed in developing countries.
Excellencies,
India has built its credibility as Trusted Sources of pharmaceuticals, IT and other items. We look forward to playing our role in clean technology supply chain as well. I suggest that we instruct our teams to meet quickly to come up with further action plan within a certain time frame, based on our shared democratic values.
Thank you.
