While official talks between the governments of New Zealand and India on the proposed Free Trade Agreement are progressing well, the India New Zealand Business Council is keeping up the momentum in getting businesses in the two countries to interact and engage with one another with a number of activities and events.
One of these was held last week at the Langham in Auckland earlier this week. The council and High Commission of India in New Zealand jointly held a business event with the theme ‘Doing business in India – opportunities and challenges’.
INZBC Chairman Wenceslaus Anthony told Indian Weekender that the event was “Historical as it is first time in the history of INZBC that the Indian High Commission is co-sponsoring an event with the council. This is largely due to the visionary leadership of the High Commissioner Admiral (Retd) Sureesh Mehta.”
Mr Anthony said that during his tenure the High Commission has contributed significantly in promoting trade and business between India and New Zealand. One of his most significant contributions was the successful mission of Prime Minister John Key’s delegation to India in June this year. The mission was designated a state visit.
Speaking at the function, His Excellency Admiral Mehta said, “For a meaningful relationship the business community has to look seriously toward strong bilateral trade and business ties.”
While other speakers would be speaking about doing business in India, he said his call would be to explore how Indian Businesses could invest in New Zealand and how there could be more significant increase in terms of dollars of supply of goods and services from India to New Zealand.
Giving a comprehensive historical background of India, he said today India had become the focal point for the world’s big corporations. He said that there is an active market of about 500 million people in India, which global companies have an access to in the overall population of India, which is about 1.2 billion.
He said that one could look at joint ventures in various sectors and spoke about the numbers of CEOs in large Corporations overseas who are of Indian Origin. He also said though Indians are just over 1% of the total population in USA, the high percentage of Indians occupying
senior management roles across various sectors and the number of doctors, engineers, scientists, IT specialists and other professionals was considerable.
He said he was pleased to see Indians doing well in New Zealand citing the instance of Bhav Dhillon of CEMIX who joined the company as an employee just few years ago and then bought over the company, which last week was ranked the 21st fastest growing company in New Zealand – and also ranked the fastest growing manufacturer in Auckland and Northland as part of the Deloitte’s Fast50 list.
Other Speakers at the event included Sir Ken Stevens of Glidepath, Rick Osborne of Fonterra, Micheal Orton of eBus and Sameer Handa of Patton Engineering. Bhav Dhillon proposed a vote of thanks on behalf of the INZBC.
The Q & A session that followed proved a lively and interactive one with several questions being asked about the developing relationships between the two countries especially in the backdrop of the emerging FTA.
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