The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has planned a business delegation visit to Portugal and Spain in an endeavour to explore scope for collaboration as well as to promote transfer of technology with the two countries. The delegation, which has been planned from July 21-28, 2010, would also seek to observe and adopt best industrial practices in sectors such as energy, infrastructure, agriculture and food processing, tourism, tea and textiles, among others, some of which are highly SME concentrated sectors.

Incidentally, Spain had recently expressed an interest to strengthen bilateral ties with India by working towards business collaboration with India in the SME sector. Portugal shared a bilateral trade volume of US$365.83 million with India during January-August 2007 with some of its main imports from India coming from the SME stable, such as cotton, electrical machinery, textile and apparel, agro products and leather.

The prospective strengthening of ties with both Spain and Portugal augurs well for numerous Indian SME exporters who might be intending to explore business opportunities in the two countries.

Sreemita Bhattacharya