Maryland, a state in the mid-Atlantic region of the US, on Monday signed its first-ever sister state agreement in India with Andhra Pradesh. The agreement was signed between chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy and Martin Joseph O’Malley, governor of Maryland.
As part of its six-day mission to India to boost two-way trade and investment and promote Maryland as an ideal location for Indian companies looking to establish US operations, particularly in lifesciences, technology and aerospace and defence, a 100-member Maryland delegation arrived here on Wednesday. The US state will be signing a similar sister state agreement with the Maharashtra government on November 30. “This mission will help open new doors for investments, for both Maryland businesses looking to enter or expand in Indian markets and for India companies looking to enter the US markets by locating in Maryland,” O’Malley said.
Maryland, home to 400 federal, academic and private research centres and 50 federal agencies like the National Security Agency , Food and Drug Administration and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration , has over 3,000 companies owned by Indian Americans.
O’Malley also witnessed signing of agreements between two Maryland businesses and their Indian partners. ANGARAI, a Greenbelt-based management consulting firm specialising in project management, signed an agreement with CI, a technology product company based in Chennai, to pursue opportunities in mobile and web applications, potentially opening up an office in Maryland. The second signing was between Rockville-based Sheladia Associates, an engineering, architecture and development company with two Indian firms - SaiMatarani Toll Ways Limited and Gayatri Projects Limited. Sheladia will provide design and project management services valued at $3.7 million (around Rs 19 crore) for upgrading the Panikoili-Rimouli section of National Highway 215 to a four-lane facility in Orissa.
A proposal from Maryland-based DataNet Systems Corporation has also been received for an MoU with Hyderabad’s MediBus Technologies and Health Management Research Institute to establish a health helpline call centre in Maryland.
Earlier on Wednesday, giving a keynote at a meeting of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), O’Malley said India was Maryland’s 12th largest export market with $233 million in goods and services in 2010 and was the state’s 13th largest import market with more than $465 million.
“As of September, Maryland exports to India were valued at over $192 million, representing an 18 per cent increase over the same period in 2010. In the first nine months of this year, the Port of Baltimore saw $341 million in trade to and from India compared with $229 million during the same time frame in 2010 - a 49 per cent increase,” he said.