Indian students are Australia's third largest export income earner

Melbourne, Apr.3 (ANI): With India projected to be the fifth-largest consumer market by 2025, Australian-trained Indian graduates and skilled workers represent a future trade and investment bonanza as they return home to jobs in the business and government sector.

Indian students now make up almost 18 per cent of Australia's total foreign student population, the second largest group after China, which represents 23.5 per cent of the total foreign student body.

Foreign students are now Australia's third-largest export income earner, behind coal and iron ore, contributing 14.1 billion Australian dollars in direct income and an additional 12.6 billion dollars in value-added goods and services, a new Access Economic report has found.

Australia's business links with Southeast Asia are well established, going as far back as the 1950s.

Indian enrolments in Australian higher education and vocational training courses last year, a massive 54 per cent increase on the almost 63,000 Indian enrolments in 2007, and up from just 11,313 in 2002.

Take the example of 18-year-old Vasha Vankadesh from Tamil Nadu capital Chennai. A student, she contributes over 30,000 dollars annually to the Australian economy as she ploughs her way through an engineering degree at the Australian National University in Canberra.

"You're now seeing the beginnings of that sort of relationship between India and Australia," The Daily Telegraph quoted Australia's High Commissioner to India, John McCarthy, as saying on Thursday.Vasha says she chose Australia over Britain and the US because it was closer to home and cheaper. (ANI)