Indian mission seals €35m deals

BUSINESS deals that will generate sales of €35 million were agreed on the first ever Irish Trade Mission to India.

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern led the Enterprise Ireland trade mission and described the mission as a very successful week.

“Enterprise Ireland has estimated that the deals signed and delivered this week will be worth around €35m in business to those companies over the next few years,” he said.

The agreed deals will continue the growth of Irish trade with India, as the latest statistics from the Central Statistics Office shows that in the first 10 months of last year, exports to India grew 22%.

However, the value of these was just €106m, compared with the €704m in exports to China.

Yesterday, the Taoiseach announced that Enterprise Ireland is to open its first office in India in Mumbai. Later Enterprise Minister Micheál Martin said that he would be in talks with the IDA about opening an office in India also.

“Close on 60 Enterprise Ireland clients are now established exporters to India, up from 30 in 2000. This office will help further increase these numbers and will play a pioneering role in encouraging and facilitating access to new business opportunities flowing from India’s economic vigour that will accelerate market entry and drive export growth,” he said.

Mr Martin said while the mission was exploratory in nature, far more deals than expected were completed.

“This has worked out very well,” he said.

Enterprise Ireland chief executive Frank Ryan said the presence of the Taoiseach and three senior ministers opened many doors for Irish companies in India.

The biggest deal agreed was by Howard Holdings, which has agreed to a €75m joint development with Tata, India’s biggest company.

Cork-based Howard Holdings is to build a new Taj Hotel with Tata in Cape Town. Tata gives close to 75% of its profits to charity.

Howard, chairman Frank Gormley said he was thrilled the deal had finally been tied down and signed yesterday.

Audit Diagnostics managing director Michael O’Donovan was also very excited about his company’s deal with Transasia Bio-Medicals Limited.