Bilateral trade between India and Africa reached nearly US$72 billion in the 2014/2015 financial year and Indian leaders have acknowledged that more needs to be done to “intensify” trade between the two emerging economies.
This emerged from news reports out of India following the first day of the three-day India Africa Forum Summit which kicked off in Delhi yesterday, with daily Indian newspaper, DNA India, quoting the country’s external affairs minister, Sushma Swaraj, as saying: “Today, India is rising, and so is Africa. We are the most rapidly growing developing economies in the world.”
She noted that although India had a “long way to go” to match China’s trade with the continent, it was heartening to see that bilateral trade had multiplied 20 times in the last 15 years and doubled in the last five years
According to Swaraj, India was among the first emerging economies to unilaterally put in place a duty-free market access scheme for LDCs (least developed countries). “In 2014, we expanded this scheme to now include 98% of tariff lines. The benefits of this scheme extend to 34 African countries to increase their exports to India," she added.
Swaraj also highlighted the growing investment by Indian companies in Africa. "There is increasing investment in a range of sectors such as telecommunications, hydrocarbons, agriculture, manufacturing, IT, water treatment and supply, drugs and pharmaceuticals, coal, automobiles, floriculture and textiles,” she said.
According to data cited in India’s First Post newspaper’s business section, Africa trade contributed 9.4% of India's total trade in the 2014/2015 financial year – US$71.65 billion of a total of US$758 billion.
Of India's total exports (U$310.34 billion,) Africa imported 10.6% or (US$32.8 billion). In turn, Africa exported 8.7% (US$38.8 billion) of India’s total imports (US $447.96 billion).
South Africa is India’s top export market, having imported US$5.3 billion worth of items exported in 2014/15. Kenya and Egypt follow, with Nigeria taking the fourth slot.
