The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Madurai News : Meet on doing business with US on March 11

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Friday, Mar 04, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Madurai

Meet on doing business with US on March 11

By Our Staff Reporter

MADURAI, MARCH. 3. "Both India and the United States have been mutually benefiting through bilateral trade over the years and scope for enhancing exports is vast, provided the Indian business community seized the opportunity," said T. R. K. Ramakrushna Rajha, Chairman, Indo-American Chamber of Commerce.

The immense potential for bilateral trade between the two nations should be fully exploited. And in ensuring this, the Chamber would do everything within its means to facilitate the trade and help Indians to step up their exports, he said. The Chamber would explain the A to Z of outsourcing and provide information on doing business with the USA in engineering/automotive, textiles and garments exports, to sourcing from the USA.

Speaking to reporters here recently, he said India had become the number one exporter to the US in certain products, especially diamonds, knitted and woven carpets, linen, frozen shrimp, cashew nuts, antibiotics, woven silk fabrics, agro commodities, pharmaceutical and auto components. India was also emerging as a strong and competitive global manufacturing and research and development base. "With continued support from the Government and better infrastructure, the growth of Indian exports to the US could be sustained at 20 per cent or above," he said.

From three billion US dollars in 1991, exports to the US had reached 18 billion dollars in 2004 in terms of exports of merchandise and IT services. The US continued to be India's number one trading partner and foreign investor.

The largest items of export from India were diamond and gold jewellery (3.4 million dollars), carpets (384 million dollars), frozen shrimps (382 million dollars), iron and steel (617 million dollars), textiles and apparel (612 million dollars), pharmaceuticals (223 million dollars), machinery (303 million dollars) and auto parts (132 million dollars).

During 2003, exports of diamonds and jewellery showed an overall growth of 8.1 per cent and exports of textiles increased by 9.4 per cent.

On the flip side, the US exports of merchandise and commodities to India were 4.98 billion dollars in 2003 registering a growth of 22.5 per cent over 2002. After China, India was the largest export destination in terms of growth in exports.

To highlight the prospects available for the Indian business community, experts in the field including top officials of the US Consulate will address a one-day seminar on `Business with USA - Madurai Meet 2005.' It would be organised by the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce at Hotel Sangam on March 11.

Madurai has been chosen as the venue because the city and neighbouring districts had ample scope in textiles, readymade garments, bakery, agro, herbal, granite, blue metal, rubber and plastic based industries, he said.

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