India's clean water supply to get boost from Israel

New Delhi: Israel is looking to boost India's supplies of clean water, a resource that is projected to become increasingly difficult to obtain in the future.

A delegation of Israeli water companies, led by the director general of its ministry of economy, Amit Lang, Tuesday met with Indian companies here to explore collaborations.

"A major item on our agenda is to offer Israeli expertise for India's Clean Ganga project, for which we have met the government's water secretary here," Lang told reporters on the sidelines of the business meeting.

Israel, which has the world's largest and cheapest desalination plant in the world, offers a range of technologies ranging from desalination and recycling to smart metering of water and drip irrigation, he added.

Among the Israeli companies at the conference were some, who are already in collaboration with India, like NaanDan Jain Irrigation that is constructing a $55 billion fully-automated 12,000-hectare drip-irrigation project in Karnataka.

An agreement was signed in 2012 between the two nations aimed at fostering cooperation, with a focus on urban water management.

Regarding the free trade agreement (FTA) being negotiated by both sides for the last three years, Lang said he had impressed upon the India's commerce secretary that an FTA with Israel is unlike that which India is negotiating with developed economies because there are less than a handful of Israeli companies as large as the Indian ones, and, thus, pose no threat to the indigenous industry.