Bosnia seeks greater economic cooperation from India

Pledging to take bilateral relations with India to the next level, Bosnia and Herzegovina today sought greater economic cooperation with India in form of larger investments in the manufacturing, energy and IT sectors.
Speaking at the signing of an MoU between the CII and Foreign Trade Chamber of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Foreign Minister of Bosnia Zlatko Lagumdzija said his country shares a very warm relations with India and pledge to take it to the next level.
"We are a small country, there are many like us in Europe and elsewhere but we want to reaffirm that size is not what matters. What only matters is that you are either successful or you are not successful, as a country or as an economy. If size is all that matters, we are equal to all except India and China," he said.

Expressing disappointment over the small scale of trade between the two countries, he said India is a huge economy and it disappoints them to have meagre amount of USD 45 million trade between both the countries.
"For us, 45 million might matter a lot but for the size of an economy that India is, it's not an impressive number. China has announced to spend around 10 billion dollar investment in the European region most of which might come into Bosnia due to better business opportunities and resources, so we also expect India to scale up its investment into our country," he said.

Zlatko Lagumdzija who is on a five-day tour to India accompanied by his wife and a business delegation, yesterday met his Indian counterpart Salman Khurshid.
After the signing of the MoU, the minister also took specific complaints from Indian businessmen who wanted to invest in Bosnia, and assured full support.
The event was also addressed by Bosnian High commissioner Dr Sead Avdic and CII Regional Committee on Europe chairman Deep Kapuria.