Sweden congratulates India for being pharmacy of the world: Envoy Klas Molin

Sweden's envoy to India Klas Molin has said that his country "congratulates" India for being the pharmacy of the world even as it notes how "production and rollout of vaccines" are taken place in India and also how "bilaterally, what India is doing to help its neighbours." Speaking to WION, Envoy Klas spoke about the recent India Sweden virtual summit and explained that both have "very active partnership".

Both countries held a virtual summit last week. Sweden is the second nordic country with which Indian PM Modi has held a virtual summit. Last year, the India-Denmark virtual summit took place. On the second India Nordic summit, envoy Klas said, "PM and Indian govt sees it in interest to approach us in the group, combined with bilateral relation."

PM Modi had visited Sweden in 2018 for a bilateral visit as well as for the first India-Nordic summit. The 2nd India-Nordic summit is expected to take place later this year in Denmark.

On recent allegations of a Swedish company being involved in bribes in India, the envoy said, "These issues are taken very seriously by the Swedish government as well as the Indian government, I am sure relevant authorities will look at this".

Swedish news channel SVT reported yesterday that Swedish truck maker Scania allegedly paid bribes to win contracts in India.

On India-Sweden virtual summit, the envoy said, "The virtual summit is the latest of 5 interactions between our Prime Ministers in recent years. They had a good working relationship during the covid times. This is the mode they have to follow, which is virtual. It was a good opportunity to run through what is a very active partnership. They have a joint action plan together and also an innovation partnership. This summit really gave a wonderful opportunity to run through the priorities, which remain the same."

"We have very strong cooperation in trade and investment, various kinds of research on health, a number of key issues like climate change is another area that they discussed. Sweden has decided to join the international solar alliance," the envoy added.

On Sweden and India dealing with COVID-19 crisis, envoy Molin said, "We had interaction with our health ministers over the year and we had a number of other interactions of experts from both sides. We have a health MoU, in effect over a decade. Under the MoU, one of the things that were discussed and highlighted last Friday was a health hub that has been created at AIIMS, in Jodhpur, Rajasthan. This is the latest manifestation of cooperation. It is true, AstraZeneca is here in a big way, cooperating with the serum institute in Pune. We are watching both the production and rollout of vaccines for vaccination in India, also internationally efforts under covax, and also bilaterally, what India is doing to help its neighbours."

On the progress of innovation dialogue that was announced in 2018, he said, "We have an innovation partnership, its part of the joint action plan, but it is also a standalone partnership. The PM of Sweden is personally very engaged in innovation. He chairs the national innovation council himself. When the state visit took place in late 2019 here in India, the King and Queen came, we also had the first innovation dialogue. The PM and King of Sweden jointly inaugurated the first dialogue."

On being asked if Myanmar was discussed during the virtual summit, the envoy said, "The Prime ministers expressed concerns, definite and strong concerns over recent developments in last month as the new Parliament was about to take their seats, the govt was overtaken by military authorities. It is particularly troubling given the last 10 years of democratic change, the opportunities, the free elections for 2015, the elections in Nov 2020, that had given an increasing clear majority for a party and civilian rule. The leaders acknowledged how serious they view it and how important is for the international community to step in and denounce the development."

On the India-Nordic summit, Klas Molin said, "The first summit happened in Stockholm, back-to-back with PM Modi's visit in April and we were very happy and honored to host that. If I may speak for India, it is very clearly a useful way of meeting several leaders who happen to be similar in focus."