India-Singapore bilateral trade soars to SG\$ 19.9 billion

Singapore, Aug 20 (UNI) India and Singapore bilateral trade has grown by almost 70 per cent in the last two years to 19.9 billion Singapore dollars in 2006, Singapore's Minister of State of Trade and Industry, S Iswaran said here today.

Addressing the India-Singapore Healthcare Seminar today, he said India has become Singapore's 12th largest trading partner last year while Singapore has become India's third largest export destination, after the United States and the United Arab Emirates.

In 2005, India became Singapore's seventh largest Asian investor with an investment of almost 1.2 billion dollars.

On development in the healthcare industry, Mr Iswaran pointed out that Singapore healthcare companies have already seized the initiative and ventured into India.

He noted that Singapore's Parkway Holdings Limited had joined India's Apollo Hospitals to set up Apollo Gleneagles Hospital in Kolkatta in 2003, and the Pacific Healthcare Holdings's Pacific Medical Centre in Hyderabad in 2004.

Singapore's Cordlife will soon join their ranks with the opening of its state-of-the-art tissue processing and storage facility in Kolkata this year, Mr Iswaran said in his assessment of trade development between the two countries.

By end of last year, almost 2,600 Indian companies were operating out of Singapore, he added.

UNI