India and Canada of great use to each other

There has been a huge increase in the number of Indian investor applicants seeking permission to enter Canada and the interest of Indian investors has been five-fold over the past year.

As yet another sign of the growing economy class of India, a total of 235 investor immigrant applications were filed to the Canadian High Commission in New Delhi till October 2008, which was just 40 in 2007 and merely 10 in the year 2006.

Richard Kurland, a Vancouver policy analyst who obtained the statistics through a data request to Citizenship and Immigration Canada, said that the trend is the same as was observed in China in the late 1980s.

A part of this dramatic increase, Kurland says, can be attributed to the 2007 legislative changes in India that raised the amount that Indian nationals could invest in foreign nations, which effectively allowed people to qualify as investor immigrants to Canada.

The number of Indian investors are also promising for B.C., which has been encouraging India in an aggressive manner to build stronger economic relations.

As India celebrates its 60th Republic Day marking the birth of its constitution, its consul general to Vancouver is openly sending a message that India is open for business.

In spite of the global economic downturn which will surely have an impact of India, Ashok Das says that the economy of India is still projected to grow be seven percent in the year 2009.

Das said that B.C. needs to take advantage of the opportunities to collaborate on infrastructure projects and clean technologies.

Das said that India is building itself, its infrastructure, in a phased manner and is a developing country which is looking for investment in this sector as well as IT sector and green technology.

Das said that according to him, members of the Indian diasporas in B.C. are the best ambassadors of the country and that they play a very important role in promoting potential trade opportunities. He added that there are many B.C. companies which are doing extremely good business in India in areas of mining, alternative energy and pharmaceutical research.

The benefit is not only for Canada as even India is looking towards B.C. as a potential market to expand its textiles, carpets, leather products, plastic materials, IT services and electrical and machine tools.

Also, the most popular democracy is eager to have more and more number of tourists from Canada, Das added.