South Australia seeks to boost trade ties with State

Further, Senior Trade Commissioner — India A K Tareen said Australia was eyeing Karnataka, after having seen success in Tamil Nadu.

Talking to Deccan Herald, Tareen who was in City to address members of Bangalore Chamber of Commerce & Industry (BCIC) said, SA, seeing a lot of synergy with Karnataka was keen on wooing more business from here.

He said that SA has identified wine, defence, automobile, mining, food processing, education, and IT and BT as key areas of interest. With SA’s wine exports for 2007-08 valued at A$1.85 billion and food exports at A$1.99 billion, Tareen believes SA products have big potential in the State as some of its brands are already available here. Besides, SA is also hoping to cash in on the opening of defence sector in India, and Tareen believes that Karnataka would be the ideal choice with several defence establishments present here. 

SA, he added is ranked as the defence capital of Australia and has several art of the state developments. “Even as we speak SA is developing a A$8 billion worth anti-airwarfare destroyer for the Government of Australia,” he said, adding “we also have a good set of automobile parts manufacturers in the State, and Karnataka being one of India’s automobile hub, we see a lot of opportunities here.”

He also said SA is confident of achieveing its strategic plan of tripling the exports target India to A$25 billion by the year 2013. On what SA can offer to the State, Tareen, quoting a 2008 KPMG study said SA is the number one state in Australia & Asia Pacific in terms cost competitiveness. And being the 10th most attractive mining destination, saw tremendous investment and job opportunity in the State. Incidentally, SA is working closely with several universities and in talks to offer scholarships for bureaucrats and industrialists in Karnataka.