Shri Kamal Nath, Union Minister of Commerce and Industry, has invited the German businessmen to invest in India.
During the Business Luncheon Meeting with Dr. Angela Merkel, Chancellor, Federal Republic of Germany, Shri Kamal Nath said: “As India continues its steady march towards becoming an industrialized nation over the next two or three decades, I invite German businesses to participate in this exciting growth story”.
Given Germany's prowess in the manufacturing sector and India's own engineering eco-system, German investments in India have traditionally been in the manufacturing sector, the Minister added.
“The major sectors that have attracted investments from Germany since liberalization are electrical equipment, transportation industry and metallurgical industries. Together, these sectors make up more than 40 per cent of overall German investment in India.
In fact, this momentum is being sustained and is even growing; since 2007, there have been more than 200 technical collaborations between Indian and German firms for industrial machinery alone”, Shri Kamal Nath said.
He further emphasised that more than 240 Indian firms are already engaged in a business in Germany and the number is constantly growing.
While two third of these firms belong to the IT-sector, the rest is spread across the textile industry, engineering industry, pharmaceuticals and automotive components.
The Minister underlined that the bilateral trade between India and Germany crossed 10 billion euros in 2006, which was a target that was supposed to have been met in 2010.
He said that Germany figures among the top ten FDI destinations in India yet it accounts for 3.6 per cent of the total flows that have come into the country so far.
FDI inflows have more than doubled from US$7.7 billion in 2005 to a record US $ 19.4 billion in 2006. With strengthening FDI inflows, India has the potential to become a critical part of Asia's elaborate production network.
Press Information Bureau Government of India
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