Germany for cooperation in many areas

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, MAY 18. The German Director General for Economic Affairs, Mr. Joachim Broudre Groeger, today expressed interest in Indo-German cooperation in a variety of areas, apart from information technology (IT). Germany is also keen on attracting more Indians for the purpose of education while on visa issues, he said guidelines were being reviewed, and full details would be published in future.

He was speaking at a meeting organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) with a high level German business delegation headed by Mr. Groeger.

It comprised representatives of companies in machine tools, engineering goods, construction equipment, medical technology, logistics, textiles, insurance and IT.

On education, he said Germany was considering a support scheme, similar to the one for talented technical people, for Indian students there.

He said Germany would like to be able to say that there were thousands of Indians working in Germany.

More Indian students studying in Germany would result in strengthening of the bond between the two countries, he felt.

According to Mr. Bhaskar Balakrishnan, Joint Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs, the Indian Government is keen to facilitate business-to-business linkages between the two countries. He said great opportunities were available for cooperation and trade between the two countries, and for German investment in India.

In order to provide a supportive policy framework, both trade and investment have been liberalised, and the Foreign Investment Promotion Board had been active. Besides, the Foreign Investment Implementation Authority (FIIA) had been set up recently to address implementation issues and other concerns of foreign investors.

Speaking on investment opportunities in India, Mr. Balakrishnan identified insurance, finance, telecom and information technology as promising areas.

On possibilities for cooperation, he said technology-based areas such as information technology, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals held plenty of opportunities.

Mr. Rajendra Pawar, NIIT Chairman, who heads the CII Information Technology Committee, said Germany had tremendous expertise in the field of small and medium enterprises, which formed the backbone of its industry, and recommended transfer of technology from the German to the Indian SMEs sector.

Germany felt that India had something extremely desirable to offer in the IT sector, Mr. Pawar said.

The German Government had expressed interest in injecting large numbers of talented Indians working in Germany - 20,000 to 25,000 - in the IT field.

Mr. Pawar suggested that an option for Germany accessing Indian IT talent, other than directly having them to travel to Germany, was to build up networks between organisations so that technology could be leveraged to access talent in India.

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Section  : Business
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