Launching the India-Australia Economic Strategy Report, the Commerce Minister noted that India had opened up the agriculture sector for greater investments

With the ease of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) norms, India has unleashed tremendous opportunities for the Australian companies to come and invest, Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal has said.

Speaking at the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) session on Enhancing India Australia Bilateral Economic and Trade Relationship, Goyal said that India is continuously trying to make the FDI policies more facilitative, congenial, and supportive of foreign investment.

Talking about the mutual areas of engagement, the Minister said that newer areas like space, nuclear energy, and defense production will open up good opportunities. He further mentioned the emerging sectors like defense, sports, textiles, textile designing, digital gaming, animation, water management, commercial ship-building, space collaboration, and digital engagement in education, and said that these sectors hold great promise in the efforts to balance this trade relationship.

Launching the India-Australia Economic Strategy Report, the Minister noted that India has also opened up our agriculture sector for greater investments in food processing and value addition.

The Minister specifically mentioned that with 3B objectives: Bigger trade basket - Better trade basket – Balanced trade relationship, India and Australia can see huge and exponential growth in the trade relationship.

He further said that diversification of supply chains is critical for managing the risks associated with the supply of inputs, including disciplining non-transparent and opaque economies.

Australia and India have been working together even more closely on the strategic front, be it Malabar exercises, QUAD groupings, the partnership on several strategic areas. He added that this close collaboration will feed into our economic partnership also in the years to come.

Goyal further mentioned that efforts like the Australia Strategy Report will help both sides to align the trade and economic policies to implement this strategy report. “We can find good areas of cooperation which will also dovetail into our negotiations for a comprehensive economic partnership agreement”, he added.