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India still a difficult country to do business with: Lord Paul

Ambassador for British business and an eminent NRI industrialist Lord Swraj Paul on Monday said India was still regarded as a difficult country to do business with in spite of the fact that eventual returns were recognised as 'excellent'.

"Global investment is a competitive business. Investors have to be persuaded to opt for India rather than, say, Brazil or China," Paul said at a meeting of Indo-British Partnership organised by Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry in New Delhi.

The decade of 1990s was a turning point for the Indian economy and so was for the Indo-British commercial relationship, he said.

Bilateral trade between two nations has crossed the £5 billion (over Rs 330 billion) mark in 2000. The United Kingdom has strengthened its position as India's second largest trading partner with 6.4 per cent of the market, he said.

"We need to build on this success," Paul said adding that one of the features of Indo-British trade was that it was a genuine two-way flow.

He pointed out huge potential for increasing mutual ties between the two nations in the area of information technology and electronics as the majority of inward investment projects in the UK last year were those connected with IT, software and electronics.

Paul said that UK was India's natural IT partner in Europe as 63 per cent of the total number of foreign nationals who were granted permission to enter the UK on the basis of their IT qualifications last year were Indians.

More and more Indian companies were realising that there was an enormous potential in the UK, he said adding, "we have after all 70,000 IT companies of our own."

Within 10 years, the European market would be larger than the US market, Paul said.

IT software industry was becoming the model of mutually beneficial partnership, Paul said adding that the success in this area had mirrored in other sectors like pharmaceuticals.

The Indo-British Partnership was created in 1993 to increase bilateral trade and investment and to promote technological and scientific links between both the countries.

During 2000, UK's exports to India were up by 41 per cent and similarly Indian exports to UK were up by 16 per cent, Paul added.

Paul said these and other key issues would be discussed at the next meeting of the India-UK Roundtable chaired by him and Planning Commission Deputy Chairman K C Pant. The meeting will be in the UK from September 21-23.

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