Frontier India Current Affairs

Written on June 11, 2008 – 9:21 am | by FICA |

Indian industry, with its successful and ethical practices can go a long way in helping South Africa develop and in augmenting South-South cooperation so that the developing countries take their rightful place in the global economic arena, Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma, President of the African National Congress, South Africa, and Anand Sharma, Minister of State for External Affairs, agreed during an interactive session organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in New Delhi today.

India is a powerful emerging economy and South Africa is a leading country of Africa with deep, historic ties with India. Indian industry should see South Africa as an entry-point into Africa, said ANC President Zuma, who is leading a high level ANC delegation to India. Interacting with top industrialists during the CII session, he invited them to specially step into the area of capacity building in his country.

India is committed to genuine empowerment of the people of South Africa said Anand Sharma and urged the industry to participate in capacity building through skills development and education. He extended full support of the Indian and South African governments to the industry in its effort to work towards development of South Africa and South-South cooperation between the two countries.

The industry must work towards exceeding the ‘10 billion USD by the year 2010′ bilateral trade target set by the two heads of government in 2004 and try and take it to the tune of 15 billion USD in the next five years, said K V Kamath, President, CII. This visit has added many new vistas to bilateral economic cooperation and is a milestone event in India- South Africa relations, he added. He invited the ANC president to address the CII-India Business Forum in South Africa and proposed the reopening of CII’s office in Johannesburg, during the meeting.

For Indian industry, time has come to at long term sustainable partnerships with Africa, and specially, South Africa, for promoting stability, peace, progress and growth to develop together on an equal footing, said Syamal Gupta, Chairman, CII Africa Committee and Chairman, Tata International Ltd.

South Africa, is the preferred location for several Indian companies that run their Africa operations from here. The developments are aided by the fact that there is growing complementarity between the two economies which is reflected in the growing two-way FDI flows. There is also a greater exchange of business delegations between the two countries, leading to enhanced cross-border institutional arrangements.

India-South Africa trade has grown rapidly over the last few years, from US$1.8 billion in 2001-02 to US$4.7 billion during 2006-07.

Despite the substantial increase in bilateral trade, both sides believe the current volumes are much below the potential.

Economic relations between India and South Africa have been marked by steady progress in recent years. Bilateral trade has grown from US$ 1.8 billion in 2001-02 to US$ 4.7 billion during 2006-07(Source: Department of Commerce, GOI). Projects worth an estimated USD 2 billion are under execution in South Africa.