Australia to invest USD 100 billion into India by 2035: Aussie diplomat

While discussing the future of Indo-Australian bilateral trade at the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industries (BCCI) in Kolkata, Rod Hilton said that Aussie traders were getting more interests in investing into India since the Government of India introduced GST and implemented other economic reforms.

"We are planning to make India the third largest destination for outward investments with a 10-fold jump in Australian investment into India from USD 10.3 billion in 2017 to over $100 billion by 2035," Rod Hilton said.

"Presently, approximately about 60 Australian companies are operating in India in the field of infrastructure and several big firms, including BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, Snowy Mountain Engineering, Macquarie Group and Leighton Holdings, have offices in India," Hilton added.

Speaking on the ongoing Free Trade Agreement (FTA) negotiations between these two countries, the senior Aussie diplomat said that the process might slow down due to upcoming Lok Sabha election in 2019.

"We are suspecting that there might be a temporary slowdown in the FTA negotiations due to general election in India in 2019, though both the countries are committed to finalize the FTA to strengthen Indo-Australia export trade relationships," Hilton said.

Aussie deputy high commissioner in New Delhi said that West Bengal was among the top ten priority Indian states for Australia where the continent wanted to multiply its investment in next few years.

"Australia has a special interest in mining, resources, education, infrastructure, startups and tourism sectors in West Bengal and there is ongoing conversation with the both the state and Central governments about skill development and education programs since a huge student diaspora from India are already studying in Australia," Rod Hilton said.

"West Bengal had received only one per cent of Australia's investment of around 10.3 billion USD into India in 2017 and there is a huge scope of enhancing Australia's investment into Bengal by 2025," he told the media.

Australian interest in Kolkata and West Bengal received a big fillip after a report “An India Economic Strategy to 2035: Navigating from Potential to Delivery” commissioned by the Australian government was released to the public on 12 July 2018.

The report foresees a three-fold increase in Australia’s exports to India from $14.9 billion in 2017 to $45 billion by 2035 

Meanwhile, the government of Australia has announced to reopen its permanent consulate in Kolkata by January, 2019, decades after it was shut down due to some trade union issues.

(Reporting by Deepayan Sinha)