New business prospects for Italian SMEs with an international outlook interested in the Indian market.
SMEs based in the Piedmont Region had the opportunity to attend the webinar “Objective India. Opportunities for the enterprises of Piedmont” – organized by the Italian Ambassador Vincenzo De Luca, together with the Councilor for internationalization of the Piedmont Region, Fabrizio Tricca. The event focused on the strengths and opportunities of the economic partnership between Italy and India.
The virtual meeting aimed at analyzing the key points of the bilateral economic partnership, which hinges on priority sectors such as the energy transition, advanced machinery and food processing.
In 2019 trade between the two countries exceeded $9 billion, with India’s export to Italy reaching a total value of $5.15 billion and Italian exports amounting to $4 billion. Italy was, and still is, India’s third EU partner, after Germany and France.
In 2020, the economic repercussions of the pandemic caused a reduction in trade between the two countries. But the first ten months of 2021 led to a recovery, with bilateral trade reaching a total value of €8.7 billion. Besides, the two countries developed a strong cooperation in the new technologies field, especially in areas related to the energy transition.
In the first 9 months of 2021, Piedmont’s exports to India totalled 318 million euros, accounting for 12% of Italy’s exports, and up 40% from the same period of the preceding year.
The webinar also presented the broad range of promotional and financial instruments that support the internationalization of Italian Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs).
“Our SMEs can now count on a particularly favourable ecosystem and a package of new instruments and platforms that encourage them to internationalize to enter the local market,” explained Ambassador De Luca, also underscoring that this is from a “supply chain perspective involving all the institutional, financial, and training actors concerned.”
In fact, in order to increase business opportunities between the two countries, in recent days the Embassy of Italy, together with Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (CDP), organized another virtual event to for the launch, in India, of CDP’s Business Matching Platform – to which INDiplomacy dedicated this article – which will allow enterprises to connect and grow by setting up new partnerships.
The event was opened by Ambassador, Vincenzo De Luca, who stressed how complementary the productive systems of Italy and India are, both mainly consisting of small and medium enterprises that can interact and cooperate by doing business, by promoting common investments, and by sharing and jointly developing technology and new products.
The event was attended by all stakeholders of Sistema Italia (ICE – Italian Trade Agency, Indian-Italian Chamber of Commerce, SACE- Italian export credit agency and Simest), by the Confederation of Indian Industry, which is already a partner of the Embassy of Italy in New Delhi, and by several other companies operating in the two countries.
