"Real Interest In Investing In Infrastructure In India": US Ambassador

The US Ambassador to India, Eric Garcetti, on his first visit to Kolkata said the city has a special place in Indo-US ties as it was the second consular office set up by the US when Benjamin Joy was appointed by George Washington to go to Kolkata in 1794.

Mr Garcetti said touched upon the partnership in the context of infrastructure building.

To a question by NDTV on how the US sees itself as a partner of India in countering China's Belt and Road Initiative, Mr Garcetti said, "India is going through an amazing transformation and it is going from majority rural to majority urban in just a decade or two."

"I won't talk about what other countries do, but I'll say what the United States offers, which is an open and transparent methodology, connection to folks who can be partners in accelerating infrastructure," he said.

"We get proposals all the time from American companies who say 'we have tens of billions of dollars to spend on infrastructure anywhere in the world', and there is a real interest in doing this in India. It's not just to make money. It's to help build the future," Mr Garcetti said.

"...We are also teaching governments, whether it's state or national governments, how to do this transparently so that there is less corruption, so that you can always not only go to lowest bid," Mr Garcetti said.

"Lowest bid sounds good, but as we have seen in many countries, you're left in debt, you're left dependent on countries and that's not what the US does. We don't want infrastructure to be anything about dependence. We want it to be a facilitator of improvement of human life," Mr Garcetti added.

He said the Quad is another place where the US has great partners on infrastructure.

One of the key projects that India is pushing is the trilateral highway as part of a BIMSTEC project, which the authorities say could be completed within the next three to four years if things go according to schedule.

This planned road will start from Bangkok and pass through cities such as Sukhothai and Mae Sot in Thailand, Yangon, Mandalay, Kalewa, in Myanmar, before reaching India on the Indo-Burma border in Manipur. In India, the highway will pass through Moreh (Manipur), Kohima (Nagaland), Guwahati (Assam), and Siliguri (West Bengal) before reaching Kolkata.