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India, Germany look at SME synergies
By siliconindia
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Thursday, 04 November 2004, 20:30 IST
BANGALORE: With Indians companies queuing up to set up base in Europe, several government agencies are doing their bit to attract them.
With its two government-backed forums, Frankfurt Economic Development Corp (FEDC) and Go To Bavaria, Germany are making a strong case to be the European hub for the Indian tech industry.
Indo-German bilateral trade amounted to $4.5 billion last year and the German Ministry for Economics and Labour plans to grow this by bringing together SMEs from India and Germany, according to Mr Rainer Jaekel, head of the countrys department of innovation and technology.
At a press conference on the sidelines of Bangalore IT.COM today, Mr Jaekel said a series of forums are planned in the two countries to primarily focus on areas where the SME sectors can leverage and collaborate on their expertise.
He pointed out that there are today 3.3 million SMEs in Germany of which 2,00,000 focus on creating new products and 34,000 enterprises working on R&D.
Large German companies are already in India building software and processes for the global market reaping the benefit of high skilled labour with cost advantage. We believe the same should be made available to the SMEs in Germany, he explained.