‘India needs concessions for EU FTA’

How is the India-EU FTA progressing?

The European Commission is a leader on free trade agreements. We would like to see a deeper and wider FTA with India. We see this as a substantial win-win for both sides but the Government of India needs to understand that it will have to make concessions to achieve this. And the reality is that EU accounts for 14% of India’s exports while India accounts for 2% of EU’s exports.

So, I think the balance of advantage in the FTA is clearly in favor of India. For Ireland, the bulk of our trade with India is actually in the services sector like IT services. So, we will see benefits for some sectors. One sector that we would like to see a lot of exports from India would be the alcohol or liquor sector. Irish whiskey lags far behind Scotch in the Indian market, and we would certainly like to see more exports in that area.

What about emerging sectors like technology and startups?

We have around 30 Indian companies with a substantial presence in Ireland, and they include household names like Infosys and Wipro. And then you have other Irish companies in that area such as the PM Group, the computer systems design company, which has a large presence here in India. We have a certain amount of cross fertilization between these companies. We are also looking at ways in which we can help early stage Indian startups, while they are still capitalized at $10 million or less, to gain a foothold in Ireland as a way of accessing European markets .

India is signing several migration and mobility agreements with European countries. Are India and Ireland seeing something in common?

We have about 6000 or 7000 Indian students going to study in Ireland every year. They are then allowed to live and work for two years after graduation. For many of them, if they are working for a large international company and doing well, the company will usually arrange for a work permit and long-term residency in Ireland. In addition, we have a visa scheme for highly skilled workers.

In the context of India, this would typically include people such as nurses and other health care professionals. But other categories are covered, including for example cooks and hotel staff, and about 4000 or 5000 Indians travel under those schemes in a year. Government of India is keen to promote these mobility agreements with European countries. But frankly, we don’t see the need for that because the existing plans meet our needs and they meet the needs of most Indians who are interested in traveling to Ireland.

Are there any initiatives planned to expand the bilateral partnership?

One area that is very important is education. There is a strong flow of Indian students to Ireland, but we are looking at increasing collaboration between Irish and Indian universities.

So at the moment, there are about 21 agreements between Irish colleges and universities and their Indian counterparts, and they cover various areas like their research collaborations, staff and student exchanges. There is the possibility of joint degree programs where you study for some time in India, and some time in Ireland. So we are looking at an MoU on education, which will facilitate collaboration between universities, but on lines of their own choice.

How does Ireland view India in terms of business opportunities, especially outbound investment from China recently?

Excessive reliance on any one market or any single source of supply is unhealthy for anyone and hence looking at diversification, and diversifying supply chains is a logical step for any stage. But as I said, in Ireland, we don’t let industries dictate policy and most of the major industries are global with multinational companies. There is certainly a lot of interest in India as part of diversifying its investments in Asia.