The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Australia exploring trilateral business opportunities

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Thursday, Aug 21, 2008
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Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Australia exploring trilateral business opportunities

Special Correspondent

— Photo: K. V. Srinivasan

BOOSTING TRADE: Peter Linford, Australian Senior Trade Commissioner for South Asia; C. Sarat Chandran, director, Indo-Australian Chamber of Commerce; and Aminur Rehman, Australian Consul-General for South India, at a meeting in Chennai on Wednesday.

CHENNAI: This is globalisation in action: Australia plans to improve business relations with India by promoting a trade delegation from Dubai.

The initiative is being spearheaded by Peter Linford, Australia’s new Senior Trade Commissioner for South Asia. He comes to New Delhi from a posting in Dubai and is looking to leverage his contacts there to put together a 30 to 50-member strong contingent of Gulf firms to visit India in October. But what’s in it for Australia?

Mr. Linford points out that 80 per cent of successful companies in the Gulf are run by expatriates – many of them Australians. Most Dubai firms source raw materials, products, components, services and human resources from elsewhere – much of it from Australia.

“The Australian supplier may be hesitant to set up in India, he may be too small to invest here…But if the Dubai firm for whom he is a pre-qualified supplier decides to invest in India, it’s an expansion of business for the Australian company as well,” points out Mr. Linford, who was addressing the Indo-Australian Chamber of Commerce on his first trip to Chennai.

He sees a range of possibilities unfolding for all kinds of trilateral partnerships. With Dubai investors sitting on a growing oil fortune, he wants to position Australian technical capability and Indian expertise and local knowledge to bid together for Gulf money. In fact, he expects the Dubai government to help fund such activity.

“Partnerships for building business shouldn’t be restricted to single locations in India or Australia. I think there’s a strong case for building business globally,” he says. Mr. Linford lists infrastructure and construction, financial and legal services and education as the sectors with the largest potential for this sort of approach. “I don’t think the day is far off for Australian universities, which have already set up campuses in Dubai and Singapore, looking to extend Australian education to India,” he says.

After the Dubai delegation’s visit, he hopes to put together a similar team from India to visit the Gulf nation. By next June, he expects the number of such Dubai-Australia-India ventures launching through Austrade’s help to hit the double digits.

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