Indian Finance Minister P. Chidambaram is arriving to the Saudi capital on Monday to enhance business ties with the Kingdom and seek greater cooperation from its “valued partner.”

“The finance minister will be visiting the Kingdom to co-chair the 10th session of the Saudi-India Joint Commission Meeting (JCM) scheduled for Jan. 27-28, 2014,” said Surinder Bhagat, spokesperson of Indian Embassy on Sunday.

He will be accompanied by Arvind Mayaram, secretary, Department of Economic Affairs in the Ministry of Finance and other senior officials representing different Indian ministries, Bhagat said.

Chidambaram is also set to meet Tawfiq Al-Rabiah, Saudi minister of commerce and industry and co-chair of the 10th JCM.

“The two sides are expected to discuss various issues of economic and commercial interest to both sides during the JCM including increasing exchange of business delegations, trade facilitation, cooperation between educational institutes and sharing expertise in science and technology,” the embassy spokesperson said.

During the previous JCM session, he said, the two sides had identified 42 areas of joint cooperation and made significant progress in each of those areas. Bilateral trade and commerce between India and Saudi Arabia has been growing at a steady rate, Bhagat asserted.

According to embassy statistics, Saudi Arabia is the fourth largest trading partner for India and the value of the bilateral trade in 2012-13 exceeded $43 billion and reached $32.7 billion during April-November, 2013, registering an increase of 14 percent over the corresponding period in the previous year. Moreover, Saudi Arabia is the largest supplier of crude oil to India and provides 19 percent of India’s crude imports.

The Riyadh Declaration signed by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2010 emphasized the importance of developing a broad-based economic partnership. The agreement also aimed to strengthen the strategic energy partnership.