Hon’ble President of India Shri Ram Nath Kovind addressed at the India-Iceland Business Forum. At the India-Iceland Business Forum President Shri Ram Nath Kovind highlights the potential areas to increase economic cooperation.
- India’s growth and Iceland’s niche capacities complement each other
- Scope for Co-operation in areas of Health
- The Indian pharma industry has much to offer. Every 5th tablet, capsule and injection in Generic Drugs in the world is manufactured in India.
- Similarly, Iceland has made advances in genomics, genetics, and biotechnology. It also possesses key technologies in the medical devices field. This provides a vast opportunity for co-operation between India and Iceland in the pharma, healthcare and biotech space. Finance, hospitality and tourism services also present significant opportunities.
- Scope for collaboration in the Food industry
- India is the second-largest food producer in the world. India requires technology and investment support to process its food and modern logistics chain to market it.
- India is also keen to learn from Iceland’s sustainable management of fish stock and innovative fishery products - from fish-skin leather to cosmetics. From the Indian perspective, Iceland is sought as an important partner as India works to double its farm-income by 2022.
- Scope to collaborate in the digital space and in next-generation infrastructure projects
- India is a world leader in IT services and Iceland has the advantage of being a preferred destination for hosting data centers.
- Also, India’s growth motivated by building Smart cities, green buildings, airports, expressways, high-speed railways and ports is creating immense opportunities in the infrastructure, start-up and digital sectors.
- Scope for collaboration in the renewable energy sector
- India has set itself a target of installing 175 GigaWatts capacity of renewable energy by the year 2022, and meeting 40% of its total energy needs from renewable energy by the year 2030.
- India would also be turning towards the utilization of geothermal energy in the coming future to satisfy its ever-growing energy needs.
- Whereas Iceland is a pioneer in renewable energy production specifically in geothermal and hydroelectricity which India can make benefit from.
- Wind energy is yet another area of cooperation. India ranks fourth in the world in terms of wind energy generation. It also has a dynamic domestic industry manufacturing wind turbines and is ready to engage with Iceland to harness wind energy.
- India as an attractive destination for FDI
- India is the sixth-largest economy in the world today. It has set a target to reach the 5 trillion dollar economy mark by 2025. Not only the fastest-growing major economy but have also become a leading engine of global growth.
- In the last five years India has climbed, 65 places on the World Bank Ease of Doing Business Index and 44 ranks on the Logistics Performance Index.
- The introduction of Goods and Services Tax has made India into a single tax market.
On the technological front, Iceland’s technological prowess and India’s scientific skills can help each other to drive the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the machine-intelligence age. Source: https://pib.gov.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=193126 Read More Article: India South Korea Relation Developments in India and Japan Relations
- As a result of our policies, India has attracted an impressive 44.3 billion US dollars as FDI in the financial year 2018-19. So India holds true potential for FDI from Icelander's community.
