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Amid
opposition to business process outsourcing in Europe and the United States,
a senior EU official has urged "Indian talents" to exploit the
huge potential offered by the BPO market for IT & allied services in
the European countries.
Prof
Dr Tilag Viegas of the Directorate of the European Commission said that
India, under EU's most important programme for research cooperation, was
one of the major beneficiaries and the country should " exploit the opportunities posed by EU in the field of
biotechnology, bioinformatics, genomics research, nanotechnology as also
the huge potential offered by the BPO market for IT & allied services". Recognising
the need for a joint effort to tap the potential for substantially
enhancing the current low levels of trade and investment, he said India and
EU would focus on sectors considered important to potential investors and
traders.
Speaking at a seminar on ' India-Opportunities
Unlimited ' in Brussels last week, Dr Viegas said, "the EU
has reserved a 315 million pounds budget for participation of targeted
countries and India is
one of the major beneficiaries." He also said that India has already
signed on to be a stakeholder in the Galileo
system to the tune of about $300 million. Galileo, a joint
venture between the EU and the European Space Agency, is expected to
out-perform the American GPS. The seminar, aimed to generate awareness
amongst the European community about the dynamism of the Indian economy and
the new investment opportunities was organised by Global Organization of
People of Indian Origin (Gopio), Belgium, in association with the Indian
embassy.
According
to Gopio officials the seminar assumed significance as never before had any
organisation dedicated to the interest of non-resident Indians and People of Indian Origin living in Belgium organised
such an event to promote development and bring investment into India. Welcoming
the participants, Gopio Belgium President Sunil Prasad said that India has
rapidly moved up into the rank of the front runners of the rapidly growing
Asia Pacific Region and has unleashed the latent strength of a complex and
rapidly changing nation. “India's time-tested institutions offer foreign
investors a transparent environment that guarantees the security of their
long term investments," he said.
Describing
India as a "land of great investment opportunities", R P Agrawal,
Charge D'Affaires of the Indian embassy said that the "' made-in-India ' tag is now an increasingly respected
brand, valued for quality, reliability and competitiveness". Indian
companies, he said, would need to move from a 'going global' outlook to a
'becoming global' mindset, he added. Neena Gill, member of the European
Parliament whose paper on India, Information Technology Superpower:
Challenges and Opportunities through Partnership and Alliances, was
presented, argued that becoming a large supplier of skilled resources or
creating a large consumer market in itself was not enough to bring about
investment in India.
Delivering
his keynote address, Dr Thomas Abraham, president of Gopio International
said that India will emerge as the biggest 'knowledge production centre' by
2025 if the country utilized its immense potential and "played its
cards well". On the opportunity and challenge that the Indian economy
offers, he said only nations which were able to create new knowledge from
existing knowledge and use that in turn to create wealth would emerge as
tomorrow's leaders.
The
seminar was attended by industrialists, social organisations, research
institutes, representatives from the European Commission, Belgian
government, private entrepreneurs, diplomats from various embassies in
Belgium including the Charge D'Affaires of Malaysian embassy and
journalists from France and the Netherlands.
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