Maran woos German investment in 'hard infrastructure'

Chennai, July 28: Union Minister for Communication and Information Technology Dayanidhi Maran today invited Germany to make investments in "hard infrastructure" and participate in the development of cities in the country

Addressing Regional Conference and 50th anniversary celebrations of the Indo-German Chamber of Commerce (IGCC) here, he said most of the foreign companies were evincing interest in making investments in "soft infrastructure" and now the time had come for them to make investments in hard infrastructure.

Pointing out the problems faced by the IT sector in Bangalore due to lack of infrastructure, Mr Maran said "we should not repeat the mistakes of Bangalore," and stressed the need for developing second tier cities, besides building infrastructure.

Mr Maran, detailing Tamil Nadu Government's endeavour to develop Coimbatore, Madurai, Tiruchirapalli and Tirunvelveli as second tier cities, said the state government was also taking steps to make Chennai a "new mega city" and wanted Germany to take part in the process. "We will approach you formally in this regard," he said.

He said Germany was India's fourth largest trading partner and the trade had crossed eight billion USD last year.

India's import from Germany grew by 35 per cent and exports by 12 per cent, he said.

Mr Maran said when other foreign countries were struggling with ageing problems, India had the strengh of youth with more than 65 per cent of its population, below the age of 25. India had once invited foreign companies to come to the country, manufacture and export, but now they could manufacture and sell in India itself as it was emerging as a huge market.

Every month five million new mobile users were added in addition to the existing more than 100 million mobile subscribers and 120 million telephone subscribers.

In the last one year, India had attracted foreign investments to the tune of 15 billion dollars, of which 10 billion came from the US alone.

The IT and Telecom sectors were growing at 30 and 40 per cent respectively against the 8.5 per cent GDP growth, he said adding "the US has acknowledged the India was changing dynamically".

Mr Maran said Chennai was becoming a manufacturing hub for telecom equipements as Nokia was making two million handsets a month and Motorolo from January next, would make another one to 1.5 million sets and Flextronics another one million sets.

If this was the trend, "my prediction is that by the second quarter of 2007, India would stop importing mobiles as we will have enough capacity and more than 80 per cent of the capacity will come from Chennai," he said.

While enhancing bilateral relations, Mr Maran said as the big companies have come to stay, the Small and Medium scale entreprenuers should "come and carry on".

Mr Bernd Muetzelburg, Ambassador of Germany, New Delhi said he was confident India could fly high and Southern Region could fly more high. While keeping up the good work, India should "dream big," he said. The country could not afford to rest on its laurels.

He said a target was set to double the bilateral trade which stood at 4.5 billion Euros in 2004 in five years. But in the year 2005-06 itself, the Indo-German trade had reached a record high of 9.35 billion dollars, registering a 37 per cent increase over the previous year.

UNI