Mogul upbeat despite dismal India-Dominican Republic trade deficit

Santo Domingo.- Dominican Republic’s trade deficit with India was US$121.8 million in 2013, when it exported US$10.2 million and imported US$132.1 million.

Dominican Republic Industries Association president Campos de Moya provided the figures in a meeting Tuesday with India Foreign Affairs minister Vijay Kumar Singh, who concluded his official 3-day visit to the country.

"We could ask ourselves if there are no conditions to balance our trade deficit, what could we do to make our business relationship more favorable? As we redefine our model of economic development internally, we can say that there are lessons to learn and can be useful in this redefinition process," De Moya said.

He said India’s success rests on its entrepreneurship, the ability to turn challenges into opportunities in the possibility that the government could pave the way in some areas, but also with the determination to keep going even when the government is slow on the needed reforms. That is to say, in their business style," the business leader said.

In the meeting with foreign officials and Dominican industry leaders De Moya said among the key features of India’s development figure the connectivity emerged as an overall global development, as well as the emphasis on certain areas of the education which led to a highly skilled labor to turn India into a world-class high-tech areas such as automobiles, pharmaceuticals and most notably, in the software industry.

De Moya said today many Indian pharmaceutical companies are multinationals which even purchases from other businesses worldwide.

Autos

De Moya said in the case of the automotive industry, which requires constant innovation, engineers and manufacturers in India have shown what is flexibility and speed, “of which from the AIRD little is spoken.

"No one imagined that one day Tata Steel would acquire Britain’s Corus, which was six times its size, or that Tata Motors would acquire Jaguar and Land Rover, or India’s metallurgical, Hindalco, would take over Novellis."

"The industrial sector, in particular, is optimistic, it’s fiercely sticking to the view that we can have a prosperous country for all, if we take risks, if it has the capacity to adapt to change. The Dominican business sector wants better cooperation with industry in India, I want to balance the numbers we talked about earlier," he said.

De Moya added that as AIRD president and as India Honorary Consul, it’s not about size of economies. “Let’s surprise analysts and break the predictions directing us toward unprecedented growth of our exports. If you want to summarize in one sentence what should be our priority and the priority of our regulations, it would read: export, export and export."