India’s exports to
Eastern Europe has registered an impressive growth of 18.31% in
the current financial year (April-August 2002-03) whereas India’s
imports from East Europe also increased by over 39% during the
same period. This was indicated by Shri Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Minister
of State for Commerce & Industry, while inaugurating a Seminar
on "Growth Through Partnership – Doing Business with East
Europe", here today. Shri Rudy said that there was need to
activate efforts to increase India’s exports to this region in
non-traditional items such as engineering, software/information
technology, plastics, packaging, pharmaceuticals, chemicals and
food processing. Shri Rudy also informed that Exim Bank of India
had forwarded a scheme for providing lines of credit – with a
corpus of US $ 100 million – for financing export through its
Export Development Fund (EDF). Shri S. N. Menon, A dditional Secretary,
Department of Commerce and Mr. Iacob Zelenco, State Secretary
with the Romanian Authority for Privatisation & Administration
of State Ownership were also present in the Seminar—which was
jointly organised by the Department of Commerce and Federation
of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI) – along
with Ambassadors and Councilors of twelve East European countries
and representatives of trade & industry.
The Minister
drew the attention of the Indian entrepreneurs towards the privatisation
process going on in East European countries in infrastructure
sector and asked them to take benefit of it. Establishment of
warehouses in Eastern Europe for storage of Indian exports would
go a long way in promoting the trade with the Eastern Europe region,
he further added.
Shri Menon,
in his address, said that new institutional arrangements had been
put in place to improve the bilateral economic relations. He pointed
out to immense opportunities available in East European economy
which is undergoing a transition from centrally planned economies
to market oriented economies and asked the Indian businessmen
to take advantage of it.
Major Indian
exports to East Europe include drugs, pharmaceuticals & fine
chemicals, inorganic & agro-chemicals, cotton yarn, machinery
& instrument, leather goods etc. Major Indian imports from
East Europe are iron steel & non-ferrous metals, medical products,
transport equipment, project goods etc.
