India must boost trade with Africa

The two-day Afro-India Trade Meet, being organised by Engineering Export Promotion Council of India (EEPC), began here with a stress on the need to augment the bilateral trade between India and the continent.

Addressing the inaugural meet, various speakers pointed to the huge opportunities being thrown up by the 'Continent of Future' for the Indian industry.

B Chandrasekharan, the chairman of southern regional chapter of EEPC, said that during the last decade several countries in Africa had undertaken wide-ranging market-oriented economic reforms to encourage industrial development by utlising their huge natural resources.

As the global interest renewed in that region, it was time India made fast moves for collaborations, trade deals and joint ventures, he said.

Chandrasekharan pointed out that despite the huge potential for trade in the 54 countries comprising Africa, India's exports to Africa amounted to only Rs 3,078 crore in the last financial year.

India's African trade formed a moderate 8.08 per cent of the country's total engineering exports. Besides, the export and import basket had remained very narrow, restricted to only a few items. Africa, for many Indian businessmen, is still an unchartered territory.

However, the EEPC southern region chairman pointed to a silverlining, saying that during 1998-99 when the total engineering exports from India recorded a fall of 11.6 per cent, the engineering exports to Africa recorded a positive growth of 1.18 per cent.

He said that there was a quantum jump in exports to South Africa in 2000-01. From Rs 230.11 crore in 1999-2000, the exports had risen to Rs 309.91 crore, recording a phenomenal jump of 35 per cent.

Rakesh Shah, national vice-chairman of EEPC, said India and Africa had much to give each other. While Indian had a strong engineering expertise and a huge reservoir of highly skilled manpower, Africa was endowed with abundant natural resources in the form of agro wealth, minerals and oil, he said.

The Government of India launched the 'Focus Africa' programme in 2002 for developing and enhancing India's trade with Africa. The need of hour is to identify areas of mutual interest and promote counter trade.

For instance, Nigeria has vast reserves of crude oil, but it urgently needs power plants, automobile and pharmaceutical products, and machinery and equipment for other critical areas. India has necessary skills in all these areas to offer right technology at right price, he cited an instance.

Shah said that another route that could be explored was joint ventures besides technology transfer. The Indian technology was the most suitable for the socio-economic environment of Africa, he said.