Export
Issue No. 50 - December/ /
Indian business opportunity ‘unique’
Australia’s relations with India have been making headlines, but India’s Consul General to Australia says the diplomatic ripple is much less significant than the “unique” opportunities for business collaboration.
Mr Amit Dasgupta, who visited Adelaide recently, is a veteran diplomat and organizer. Formerly an aide to Indira Gandhi, Mr Dasgupta is a Commonwealth Scholarship winner (Magill University) and author on foreign policy. He has a great deal of business liaison experience and specializes in education and training system development.
Taking up his new role mid-year after a harrowing stint in Afghanistan, Mr Dasgupta lost no time
getting out to Australia beyond the Sydney consulate.
He is very bullish on business collaboration and eager
to get it moving.
“I think to a large extent India and Australia live in a ‘comfort zone’ and haven’t really discovered each other yet,” he says, in a polite but distant “relationship of the drawing room”.
“But Australia and India have both weathered the GFC storm well and are forward-looking. India is forecasting 5.3% GDP growth this year.”
Australians recognize the commercial potential of India’s 270 million strong middle class. There are obvious synergies of commercial culture, democratic principles and English language. The mutual lack of detailed knowledge needs to be addressed.
Despite the impasse over agriculture, the Word Trade Organisation’s pending Doha round, known as the ‘development’ round for its potential to lift international barriers to trade with developing countries, is “a win-win for everybody (which can maintain) the unique pace of development” in India and benefit exporters by creating new markets there.
“If this multilateral process doesn’t take off, (we need to think) how we can pull down barriers and search for synergies,” Mr Dasgupta says.
He believes the current $16 billion annual bilat...
