India-Netherlands bilateral trade pegged at 7.2 bln dollars in 2007-08

New Delhi, Feb 10 (ANI): Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Kamal Nath has stated that the bilateral trade between India and Netherlands has increased from US 3.9 billion dollars in 2006-07 to US 7.2 billion dollars in 2007-08.

During his interaction with Dutch Minister for Foreign Trade Franck Heemskerk, Nath said the Netherlands is amongst India's top trading partners and the two way trade has shown a healthy increase.

Speaking at the bilateral meeting, Nath said the Netherlands ranks fifth in terms of investments and the cumulative Foreign Direct Investment inflows from Netherlands during 1991-2008 (up to October) was US 4.1 billion dollars.

While interacting with the visiting Dutch Minister, Nath informed that the success of the India-EU FTA negotiations is going to be judged by the economic operators on both sides.

"This underscores the importance that I have repeatedly conveyed, about the need for a balanced outcome", he added.

Major items of exports to Netherlands are petroleum, RMG cotton, ferro alloys, electronic goods, machinery and instruments while the imports from Netherlands are electronic goods, metalifers ores and metal scrap, transport equipments, organic chemicals, iron and steel.

The top sectors which attracted Dutch investments include telecommunication, services, trading activities, food processing and chemicals. Investment by top Dutch companies in India are from Hewelett Packard, Horizon, Cementrum, Powergen Holdings and Solvayay Holding. (ANI)