NEW DELHI: Commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal on Friday said that there is a tremendous scope for Australian companies to invest in India while highlighting the lopsided bilateral trade that can be balanced by new emerging sectors like defence, sports, textiles, digital gaming and animation, water management and commercial ship building, and space collaboration.
The minister also said that Australia and India can find middle ground and new areas for collaboration that can fit in the proposed bilateral free trade agreement called the comprehensive economic partnership agreement (CEPA).
“We are importing a lot of coking coal, and other mineral resources from Australia but our own exports to Australia are still at very modest and moderate levels,” Goyal said at the CII Partnership Summit, adding that he is in talks with Australia to see how their market can be opened up so that the trade basket becomes better, bigger and balanced.
India’s exports to Australia in 2019-20 were $2.9 billion, while imports were $9.8 billion.
He said the new emerging sectors like defense, sports, textiles and textile designing, digital gaming and animation, water management and commercial shipbuilding, space collaboration, and expansion of the educational engagement could balance this trade relationship which “currently has very lopsided balances”.
Stating that Australia has been a destination for banking, IT, petroleum sectors, the minister said that India looked forward to a faster ramp up of some of the companies which have faced problems in Australia.
“I do hope for fast track implementation of their projects,” he said.
On the investments front, he said there is “tremendous scope” for Australian investment into India as the country has opened up the food processing sector to greater value addition and seeks to ensure that that the farmers in India get greater incomes which would only be possible through more value add in our farm produce and greater engagement with the needs of the world.
Goyal also said that the Supply Chain Resilience Initiative- the trilateral among India, Japan, and Australia– will help diversify the supply chain of various inputs and in “disciplining non-transparent and opaque economies”.
“We can create long term, trusted suppliers where countries in the supply chain are assured of the rule of law and honest and fair trade practices. We need to identify which are the sectors on manufacturing and services which can contribute most to this partnership. We will look at areas where investments can be attracted,” Goyal said
The minister said that areas like tourism will create a lot of jobs under the new framework (of labour codes) and make tourism projects in India more viable and invited Australian countries to look at the Indian potential.
