Kovind asks Australian biz community to up investments in India

Melbourne: Lamenting that Australian businesses were not so visible in India, President Ram Nath Kovind on Thursday asked them to make efforts to address this "gap" and increase their investments in the country which offers them the prospect of "considerable returns".

Addressing the Australian business community in Sydney in presence of Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Kovind said the two countries can collaborate and benefit each other in areas of finance, logistics, industrial design, biotech, capital markets, farming, food and space technology.

"Australia and India have too much at stake in each other to not up their game," he said. "The Indian market offers the Australian investors a huge consumer base and the prospects of considerable returns." He said it was not that Australian companies were not present in India but there is enormous room for the two sides to work together.

"Frankly, the big country and the big friend that we are not seeing as much of in the India investment story is Australia... This is a gap we need to address," said Kovind, the first Indian head of state to visit Australia.

India-Australia bilateral relations have been on an upswing and the economic ties grew during the past decades, after liberalisation of the Indian economy in the early 1990s.

According to the Indian High Commission in Canberra, bilateral trade in goods and services between the two countries has grown from AUD 6.54 billion in 2003-04 to AUD 19.29 billion in 2015-16.

The president also asked the trillion-dollar Australian Superfund industry to invest in Indian infrastructure industry which will lead to a "win-win" situation for both the countries.