Commonwealth Games committee joins hands with FICCI India News and Travel Times Provides India-centric and other News and Features

The organising committee of Commonwealth Games 2010 on Tuesday joined hands with the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry as partner to effectively use Commonwealth Games' platform to facilitate deeper economic and trade relationships amongst the Commonwealth fraternity. This coming together of a national sports body and a national business chamber is expected to galvanize the sports and the business communities into spearheading and spreading the culture of sports. Amit Mitra, the secretary general of FICCI, said that the vision of the agreement is to have a sustainable future of sports in India. "The vision is that Commonwealth games is to be leveraged for a sustainable future in sports which also obviously involves massive job creation, massive inflow of resources and investments," Mitra said. Meanwhile, the chairman of the organising committee of Commonwealth Games, Suresh Kalmadi thanked FICCI for supporting the committee by saying that this would be an endeavour to raise sports sponsorships. "I am very thankful for your support for the Commonwealth Games because through Commonwealth games we want to promote Olympic sports. That is one of our major objectives and of course you know we have a revenue.... budget. We have to collect our sponsorships and I am sure FICCI will help us in collecting our sponsorships," said Suresh Kalmadi The organising committee (OC) and FICCI signed a memorandum of understanding to enable the committee led Commonwealth Business Club of India achieve the objectives. The 2010 Commonwealth Games will be India's first major international sports event after the 1982 Asian Games. New Delhi hosted the inaugural Asian Games in 1951 and again in 1982.