Photo: S.S. KUMAR

Volker Zeiler

CHENNAI: If the road to attracting foreign investments begins with the state of the infrastructure, then Chennai and Bangalore could well be losing out on a lot of investment. The traffic travails of the two cities came in for criticism from members of a visiting business delegation from Bavaria on Thursday.

"Driving in a permanent traffic jam is a hindrance for the German medium-sized entrepreneurs ... the movement of their products will be affected," said Volker Zeiler, representative of the TQ Group, located 25 km from Munich. Several members of the delegation had faced heavy traffic jams on their visit to some industrial units around Chennai.

But roads and the traffic were not the only things that were criticised. Conditions at Indian airports also came in for criticism. Underscoring the need for improving conditions, Mr. Zeiler said India could seek assistance of the Munich airport that had helped in the development of Bangkok airport.

"Your Government must ameliorate your road systems and the airports, otherwise you will not get German entrepreneurs," Dr. Zeiler said, adding that many others in the delegation were shocked with the traffic.

Opportunity

Others, such as the Bavarian State Minister for Economic Affairs, Infrastructure, Transport and Technology Erwin Huber, however, were subtle and saw in the situation an opportunity for Bavaria to assist India in developing its infrastructure.

Chairman of the Board of Greater Munich Area Reinhard Wieczorek underlined the need for cities such as Chennai to consider mass rapid transit systems such as an underground train network.

The trip to Chennai, however, proved to be useful for many in the delegation from a business perspective. For Dr. Zeiler, he was able to meet units in Chennai that would be interested in manufacturing some of the product lines such as circuit boards and embedded systems of TQ-Systems GmbH.

Noting that Indian market for the products of the Euro 80 million TQ Group was very interesting, he said Larsen and Toubro had also approached it for manufacturing special electronics for plastic injection moulding machines. Dr. Zeiler said the physical infrastructure needed improvement.

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