Carrefour close to signing India retail deal: Nath

London, Feb 1: French supermarket giant Carrefour, the world'ssecond biggest retailer, will sign a deal to enter India in the nexttwo weeks, Union Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath said ontoday.

Mr Nath, at a conference in London, said Carrefour was in talkswith Wadia Group and its Britannia unit, which is the country's topbiscuit maker and part-owned by French food giant Danone.

Cracking the Indian market, with its 1.1 billion population, remains a key target for the world's biggest retailers.

Any deal would give Carrefour a foothold in the boomingsubcontinent, where world leader Wal-Mart last year secured a retailventure with Bharti Enterprises, owner of Bharti Airtel.

''Carrefour is looking at India very closely,'' Mr Nath told reporters on the margins of a conference held by The Economist.

''They said they are very close to closing up a retail deal in thenext two weeks, that's what they told me.'' A Carrefour spokeswomansaid the group was not immediately available for comment. Wadia's groupspokesman declined to comment.

To offset slowing consumption at home, global retailers Wal-Mart,Carrefour, Germany's Metro and Britain's Tesco are pushing to enterIndia's 300 billion dollars retail industry, which is forecast to growto 637 billion dollars by 2015.

Yet their access is slowed by legislation banning thesemulti-brand retailers from entering the country's front-end retailing,only allowing them access through cash-and-carry, licence and franchiseoperations.

Mr Nath signalled however that India's stance could be changing,saying it would explore liberalising foreign direct investment to itsretail sector in the next two to three months.

GAMBLE Competition among world retailers for Indian partners istough, with Wal-Mart late last year beating Tesco to the deal withBharti.

Metro has entered via the cash-and-carry route.

They are also pitted against home grown brands like RelianceIndustries, which is investing 5.6 billion dollars in the rollout ofhundreds of stores across the country.

Should Carrefour net a partner, pressure will mount on Tesco,Britain's biggest retailer, to strike a deal or be left behind in theglobal land grab by the world's biggest supermarket owners.

Ira Kalish, director of consumer business at Deloitte Research,said retailers had to take the gamble and enter India, although it wasstill uncertain whether it would echo the rapid growth of the Chineseretail market.

''It is worth it for retailers and other foreign companies to makea bet on India because this could be the real thing and if they don'tbet on it ... they will lose out,'' he said in a telephone interview.

Carrefour, after a successful expansion into China, the world'sfastest growing consumer market, has set its sights on entering Indiaand Russia's booming consumer economies.

It has pulled out of countries where it failed to rank as amongthe top three retailers and wants to up its share of foreign sales tomake up for its tough home market. France accounted for about 54 percent of operating profit in 2005 against 63 per cent before, with someof that shifting to Asia.

Carrefour shares traded up 0.4 per cent by 1845 GMT, broadly in line with the DJ Stoxx index of European retailers.

REUTERS>