PRETORIA, Oct 2: Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and South African President Thabo Mbeki on Monday signed a sweeping pact to buttress ties between the regional powerhouses which serve as spokesmen for the world’s have-nots.

Singh’s visit coincided with the centenary celebrations of Mahatma Gandhi’s passive resistance movement launched in South Africa which ultimately helped liberate both countries.

“This is a most satisfying visit for me personally as it coincides with Gandhiji’s 137th birthday today,” Singh said, using an Indian honorific for Gandhi, after signing the strategic partnership with Mbeki.

“Both our countries face the common problem of ensuring that the fruits of development reach them who need them the most,” he told a joint press conference.

South Africa, India and Brazil have formed a bloc which fights against global trade inequalities and espouses the cause of the developing world.

“Our two countries share a common vision of a cooperative, rule-based multi-polar world order,” Singh said.

The Indian prime minister and Mbeki have met three times in as many weeks— in Brazil and Cuba where they attended two different summits and here in South Africa.

“South Africa is India’s biggest trading partner in Africa,” Singh said. “Many of our Indian companies are here and are rapidly expanding their business presence. The rapid growth of the Indian economy offers significant opportunities to both sides.”

The Pretoria agreement was followed by the signing of a pact on cooperation in education and another between Indian Railways which runs one of the world’s biggest networks and South African railway company Spoornet.

The declaration fingered “energy, tourism, health, automobiles and auto components, chemicals, dyes, textiles, fertilisers and information technology” as “priority sectors” as well as India’s “key information technology sector.”

It said bilateral trade, standing at some four billion dollars last year, according to Indian estimates, should “at least treble by 2010.”

Mbeki, lauding the long history of “warm friendship, support, solidarity and togetherness” with India, the world’s first country to sever ties with the apartheid regime, said both sides needed to work on “bringing more content to this relationship.

India is keen to find additional sources of uranium to power its nuclear reactors. South Africa by some estimates accounts for about 10 percent of the world’s reserves of the mineral.

South Africa wants to treble two-way trade with India to $12 billion by 2010, Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka said on a recent trip there.—AFP