Argentine President to visit India soon

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New Delhi: Dates are being finalised for the visit of Argentina President to New Delhi. The visit, which was earlier scheduled earlier this year, had to be postponed due to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s open-heart surgery.

According to R Viswanathan, ambassador of India to Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, “The visit of the Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has been pending for a while. And now after the new government is in place in India, fresh dates are being worked out for the visit, which is expected to take place shortly.”

A high-level business delegation will be accompanying the visiting leader. The agenda in New Delhi is expected to seek more investments, joint ventures and agreements in various sectors. “There is a good potential of cooperation between India and Argentina in the manufacturing sectors. Argentina’s industrial production includes automobiles, steel, aluminum, paper, sugar, PVC and polyethylene in which India also has strong manufacturing base and technological capabilities,” said the Indian envoy.

“Argentina with almost the same land area as India (only about 10% less), and population equaling that of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai is perfectly positioned to meet India’s growing imports of food. Argentina has the land area to feed at least 500 million people,” he said.

The Argentine economy, which was growing at an average annual rate of over 8 % since 2003, had slowed down for the first time in 2008 to an estimated 7% growth. It is expected to grow by 1.5% in 2009.

Recently, Argentina imposed restrictions on tyre imports. Hereafter the importers cannot import freely. They need a licence, which will be difficult to get. This is due to the local manufacturer (production 11 million tyres) lobby. The manufacturers might try to lobby for antidumping from Asia. There are already antidumping investigations on imports of polyester fibre and some dyestuff from India.

Restrictions were also imposed on imports in March to protect the domestic industry and reduce outflow of foreign exchange for exports, at this time of the global crisis. In some cases (especially on textile items) minimum import prices have been fixed. In other cases, licensing has been made mandatory.

Argentina is the third largest market of Latin America after Brazil and Mexico and is well integrated in Mercosur. It is rich in natural, mineral and energy resources.