JOIN USBavaria to invest Euro 2 bn on digitisation
In a bid to woo more investments, Bavaria, one the largest states of Germany with Munich as its capital and Germany’s strongest and fastest growing economy, aims to invest €2 billion in digitisation, a top German diplomat said on Friday.
Briefing reporters, Wolfgang Huebschle, head of Invest in Bavaria, the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs, Media, Energy and Technology, Munich, Germany, said: “The state government has decided to spend €2 billion on digitisation until 2018. It is the new buzzword and we are looking at different sectors including IT (information technology), medicine, electrical mobility, among others.”
Huebschle explains, “It is like a big umbrella, many small pillars will support this new initiative. Some are driven by universities, big companies, and others by the public private partnership (PPP) model.”
Bavaria is Europe’s eighth largest economy with a GDP of €521 billion (2014). Around 70 Indian companies have set up their offices in various cities of Bavaria. It is also home to a strong Indian community with more than 12,000 Indians living in Bavaria, and 70 Indian restaurants in Munich alone.
During 2002-2013, Indian exports to Bavaria have increased from €286 million to €943 million, whereas Indian imports from Bavaria surged from €445 million to €1.3 billion. In 2013, the share of Indo-Bavarian two-way trade was around 15 per cent of the total Indo-German bilateral trade.
At present, around 350 Bavarian companies like Siemens, BMW, Audi, MAN, Adidas, Allianz, Munich among others have presence in India.
Around 70 Indian firms like Infosys, Wipro, TCS, L&T InfoTech, Dr.Reddy’s, Quest, Graphite India, etc., are present in Bavaria.