Thaindian News

New Delhi, Oct 31 (IANS) India and Italy hope to expand trade volume to euro 15 billion, while increasing collaborations in a host of sectors like infrastructure, biotechnology, and agriculture, Italian Minister for Economic Development Paolo Romani said here Monday.

“We want trade to grow from the current euro 7.2 billion to euro 15 billion by 2015. Currently, we export less than we import from India. This is certainly something which we must solve,” said the Italian minister.

Italy is India’s 12th largest trade partner.

“Until yesterday, the main reason companies used to come to India was because of the cost factor,” Romani told reporters here.

“But now with things like the new manufacturing policy, you are going to become an industrialised country with competencies in various high-tech sectors like biotechnology. So, the question is about which sectors,” he added.

Romani is here with a business delegation of over 100 Italian companies to explore buisness opportunits across a variety of sectors such as automotive, infrastructure, agro-food and agro-industry, textile and leather, pharmaceuticals, design, tourism, manufacturing, IT and higher education.

Foreign direct investment from Italy into India from April 2000 to April 2011 has been about $939 million.

“India is going to invest billions into infrastructure development and this is something in which Italian companies have expertise in. We would like to see more collaborations on this front as well,” said Romani.

The minister also called for greater investments into Italy by Indian companies.

Foreign direct investment by Indian companies in Italy from Aug 2004 to Aug 2010 is in the range of $525 million with about 30 Indian firms having acquired, bought out completely companies or set up green field ventures.

Italy is the third largest economy in Europe and is among those euro zone countries whose high public debt has led to international credit rating agencies downgrade its sovereign credit rating.