US secretary of state Michael Pompeo will deliver a major policy speech next week on how India and the US can lay an economic foundation for a free and open Indo-Pacific region, an official announcement said.
Pompeo will deliver the keynote address on The US and India: An Economic Foundation for a Free and Open Indo-Pacific at the US-India Business Council (USIBC) India Ideas Summit on Wednesday, June 12. This will be Pompeo's major foreign policy speech on India.
US commerce secretary Wilbur Ross is also scheduled to address USIBC’s India Ideas Summit on June 12 and 13.
Other speakers at the conference include Matthew Bevin, governor of Kentucky; Devendra Fadnavis, Maharashtra chief minister; Ramesh Abhishek, secretary in the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion; Deepak Bagla, CEO, Invest India; James Taiclet, CEO, American Tower Corporation and Milind Pant, CEO, Amway.
Among prominent speakers are Sundar Pichai, CEO, Google; Pawan Goenka, managing director, Mahindra & Mahindra; Adena Friedman, CEO, Nasdaq; Ritesh Agarwal, CEO, OYO Rooms and Meg Gentle, CEO, Tellurian.
The Indian ambassador to the US, Harsh Vardhan Shringla, and his American counterpart Ken Juster, former Supreme Court Justice Shiva Kirti Singh, Lockheed Martin executive VP Rick Edwards, Rajasthan's deputy chief minister Sachin Pilot and Intel India managing director Nivruti Rai are other prominent speakers at the two-day conference.
Coming on the heels of SelectUSA, the India Ideas Summit will highlight the critical role cities and states play in growing the US-India commercial relationship, the USIBC said.
The India Ideas conference will be one of the first opportunities where both governments can really amplify this relationship after the election, USIBC president Nisha Desai Biswal said.
The first edition of the USIBC's India Ideas summit was held in Mumbai last year.
The US has been pushing for a broader role for India in the strategically important Indo-Pacific region.
India, the US and several other world powers have been talking about the need to ensure a free, open and thriving Indo-Pacific in the backdrop of China's rising military maneuvering in the region.
In November last, India, the US, Australia and Japan had given shape to the long-pending Quadrilateral coalition to develop a new strategy to keep the critical sea routes in the Indo-Pacific free of Chinese influence.