India invites Italian funds in core sector

Commerce Minister Kamal Nath today invited greater Italian investment in physical infrastructure and energy generation. "India is looking at an investment of $150 billion to fill infrastructure gaps in a short time," Nath told an Indo-Italian business forum today.

Although annual bilateral trade between India and Italy was at around ¤3 billion and was growing at about 10 per cent, there was still scope for improvement, Nath said. "With greater focus on the small and medium enterprises, the trade volumes will increase manifold along with employment," he added.

Addressing the forum, Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi said the European companies should look at emerging markets like India and China for expansion and development.

He, however, said India must adopt the same rules as other countries if it wanted to participate fully in international trade and financial markets. "It must apply all environmental, administrative and legal regulations to participate in international markets and improve trade," he said.

Meanwhile, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci) and an Italy-based consortium, Sistema Italia Exports (CSIE), signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to develop an agro-industrial park with investment of 900 million euros.

The park will be built on over 1200 acres of land and will house 50 joint venture EU-certified industries having individual product refrigeration centres, quality control measures and cereal and milk silos, The park will also have a triple security zone for health control and safety, and an hospital.

The MoU was signed by Amit Mitra, secretary general of Ficci, and Giuseppe Bartolucci, the president of CSIE, along with Arun Kumar, joint secretary in the ministry of food processing industries, and Antonio Marzano, the Italian minister for production activities.

The park, which will be called Sistema Italia Ficci Hyper Food City-India, aims to become a point of entry for the Italian food processing companies into joint ventures with Indian firms.