Australia to connect with tier II cities

Australia, which has a bilateral trade of $8.6 billion with India, is looking towards Mysore and other tier II cities across South India for building its export market.

As a first step towards familiarisation and market exploration, Australian Trade Commissioner & Consul General in India Aminur Rahman is on a visit to many of the tier II cities, accompanied by Business Development Manager Chaitanya Patil.

The Commission (Austrade) is the Australian government's national export and investment facilitation agency focussed on fostering strategic alliances, joint ventures, technology transfers and business collaboration arrangements between Australian and Indian organisations, in addition to product and service imports into India from Australia.

Rahman told reporters here at an interactive session by the Mysore Chamber of Commerce & Industry on Monday his country's investment in India was of the order of $1 billion, with 140 Australian companies operating here.

With around 39,000 Indian students studying in Australia, India has overtaken the UK.

At present, Australia had good business with India in gold, coal, educational services, manufacturing, beverages, medical equipment and technology transfer, and there was scope for diversifying into IT, biotechnology, medical, aviation, food processing, technology development and environment areas also.

After visiting Bangalore, Rahman came to Mysore for the first time, met scion of Mysore royal family and former MP Srikantadatta Narasimharaja Wodeyar, and visited the Infosys development facility, before meeting the local industrialists.

He is scheduled to visit Mangalore tomorrow and other centres like Coimbatore and Vishakapatnam next week.