U.S. Vice President, Joe Biden, will visit India from July 22-25. During his four day visit, he is expected to meet Indian President Pranab Mukherjee, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Indian Vice President Hamid Ansari, Indian External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid, and the Indian leader of the opposition, Sushma Swaraj, among other officials.
The two sides are expected to discuss bilateral and trade ties, energy, climate change, defence and nuclear cooperation, security, education, and other regional and international issues of mutual concern. Discussions on the security situation in Afghanistan post the withdrawal of the U.S. troops in 2014 is also expected to be on the agenda.
Biden is also expected to visit Mumbai on July 24-25 to address business leaders at the Bombay Stock Exchange. He is also expected to visit the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay to take a stock of the institute’s ongoing research in the fields of nanotechnology and earth sciences.
India-U.S. relations are increasingly broad based, covering cooperation in areas such as trade, economic, defence, security, education, science and technology, high-technology, civil nuclear energy, space technology, clean energy, environment and health. There have been regular contacts at political and official levels. Wide-ranging dialogue architecture on bilateral, regional and global issues have been put in place. The U.S. is the fourth largest source of Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) into India. In 2011-12, bilateral trade between the two sides stood at $59.2 billion.