Pretoria - South African defence, food retail, airlines, private security, and pharmaceutical companies are gearing up to take advantage of India’s lifting of its caps on foreign investment in these industries.
President Jacob Zuma welcomed India’s change of policy in a joint statement on Friday with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi after they met in Pretoria.
They said the relaxation of the investment rules “will have a major impact of attracting foreign investment in these areas, including from South Africa”. Zuma also invited Indian private sector investment into South Africa.
The two leaders also discussed intensified collaboration in the sectors of defence, energy, agro-processing, human resource development, infrastructure, mining, renewable energy, science, technology, and innovation.
Modi invited South Africa to join in the deliberations which will lead to the formal launch of the International Solar Alliance (ISA) as a common platform for co-operation among solar resource rich countries. Zuma welcomed the extensive training India offered to young South Africans and looked forward to more.
Amar Sinha, secretary in the Indian ministry of external affairs, said South African Small Business Minister Lindiwe Zulu would soon visit India to learn more about promoting small and medium sized businesses, including how to finance them.
Zuma and Modi met business CEOs from both countries and then addressed them and other business leaders at a business forum. The two leaders welcomed the decision of the Confederation of the Indian Industry (CII) to open a regional office in Johannesburg.
To ease trade and investment, Zuma agreed to speed up the issuing of visas to Indian business people and tourists. Modi thanked South Africa for extending 10-year multiple entry business visas to business persons from the countries of the Brics forum, comprising of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
Zuma and Modi said the preferential trade agreement being pursued by India and the Southern African Customs Union (Sacu), which comprises of South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, and Swaziland, would greatly boost trade between them. Sinha said the two leaders had agreed to fast-track negotiations which had already been going for five years. South Africa and India would not meet their combined trade targets without this trade agreement, he said.
Zuma also confirmed that he had offered South Africa’s support to India for its application to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group, (NSG) an international organisation which regulates commerce in nuclear materials to curb the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
India’s application has been controversial because it has a nuclear weapons programme. But it has given assurances that any nuclear material it receives through the NSG will only go into its huge programme of developing nuclear power plants.
Modi met the Indian community at a large gathering in Johannesburg last night and was then to leave for Durban and Pietermaritzburg to meet the Indian communities there and also to retrace the steps of India’s spiritual leader Mahatma Gandhi whose peaceful resistance philosophy was inspired by his experiences of racism in South Africa.
Modi visited Mozambique before South Africa and will go on to Kenya and Tanzania. This is his first visit to South Africa though he has met Zuma five times before on the sidelines of multinational organisations such as Brics. He is the first Indian prime minister to undertake a bilateral visit to South Africa in 10 years.
African News Agency