India Expands Export Markets And Products

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32266, 8 April 1970, Page 10

India Expands Export Markets And Products

(N.Z.P.A.-Keuter—Copyright) NEW DELHI. India is directing its attentions towards the “third world” to export industrial enterprise, technology and capital equipment after almost 20 years of heavy industrialisation. In recent years the government has sanctioned the setting up of about 80 joint Industrial ventures with Indian collaboration in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Many are already functioning. The goods produced by the joint enterprises range from soaps, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, inks, textiles, light machinery, cement, jute goods and sugar to air conditioners, light electrical goods, diesel engines and precision tools. India, considered among the “elder” nations of the developing world, believes that the technical know-how it has already gained is more relevant to the developing countries than the sophisticated technology of the richer nations. In India itself about 3000 industries work with foreign collaboration, but lately the Government has put severe restrictions on Indian industries seeking foreign partners inside the country, except for highly specialised items.

Of Indian projects abroad 31 are in Africa—nine in Kenya, six each in Ethiopia and Nigeria, three in Zambia, two each in Uganda and Libya and one each in Ghana, Tanzania and Togo. AID IN ASIA In Asia, India is selling expertise to its neighbour Ceylon to set up factories for sewing machines, tea-leaf separators, glass, leather, drugs, air conditioners, pharmaceuticals and textiles. Other Asian countries where Indian businessmen are working include Afghanistan, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. Indonesia is seeking Indian technical assistance to produce leather goods. In the Middle East, Indian entrepreneurs have already set up two ventures in Iran. A proposal for a soft-drinks plant in Iraq has been approved, as well as ventures in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. Indian industrialists also boast of co-operative ventures in some advanced nations—a plant to make nylon bristles and tufted carpet yarn in Ireland, an asbestos cement plant in Britain, a hard board project in the United States and a similar plant in Canada.

An Indian trade delegation, which visited Latin America and the Caribbean last year, reported big possibilities for India setting up joint industries in that area. It said that Caribbean countries had

sought.lndian technical assistance for small and mediumsized enterprises and that it would be worth while to send out a team of experts. At the same time India is making a determined effort to boost exports and reduce imports. The Government set a target of 7 per cent growth rate for exports in tile 1969-1974 five-year plan. The leader of a West German delegation which visited the country in January, Dr Mermann J. Abs, said that he had found increasing ex-port-mindedness in Indian industry.