Ministry of Finance invites Aussie cos for investment
21 Sep '07
3 min read
Shri Pawan Kumar Bansal
India has called upon Australian companies to make India their investment destination. Addressing the Australia-India Business Council Investors' Meeting in Sydney, Shri Pawan Kumar Bansal, Minister of State for Finance said that India's growing and stable investment climate present immense opportunities for Australian companies, particularly in energy and infrastructure sector.
He said India offers a huge market and enormous business potential with a growing middle class in the country. It has also the potential to become trade and business center of South Asia and East Asia with its proposed regional trade agreements with several countries and trade blocks in the near future.
He expressed the hope that Australia would find India as an attractive destination for business expansion plans mutually rewarding for both the countries.
Shri Bansal said that trade between the two countries has been continuously expanding. The bilateral goods trade between India and Australia has seen a growth of 34.51% between 2005-06 and 2006-07.
The total bilateral trade during 2006-07 was US $ 7.7 billion making India 11th largest trading partner of Australia. Shri Bansal said that Indian investments in Australia are now well over 1 billion US dollars, mostly in IT sector.
On the other hand, Australia ranks 10th and accounts for only about 2.37% of total FDI approvals with US$ 1.92 billion. Of this the inflow of FDI investment from 1991 to May 2007 has been US $ 208.8 millions.
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