The “Credible India – a Business Partner”business workshop was organisedLabourdonnais Waterfront Hotel, Port Louis on Monday, 28 November 2011 from 0900 – 1230 hrs at the initiative of the High Commission of India.

2. The workshop began with the opening remarks made by High Commissioner of India Mr. T.P Seetharam who briefly noted the opportunities and challenges foreign businesses encountered when doing business with India. He also spoke on the prospect of Mauritius emerging as a gateway to Africa for Indian businesses.

3. The workshop comprised two sessions: The first session saw a panel discussion on “Infrastructure”. Mrs Indranee Seebun, MD, SMEDA, Mr. dev Chamroo, CEO, Enterprise Mauritius, Mr. Nitin Pandea, Director, Emerging Sectors, BOI and Mr. Vaughan Heberdhan, CEO CiM were the speakers and the session was moderated by Dr. Mahmood Cheeroo, SG, MCCI. The salience of SMEs in the Mauritian and Indian economies and the synergies, the advantages of Mauritius gateway which has signed FTAs and IPPAs with SADC, COMESA and IOC as a gateway to Africa, the importance of embedded infrastructure including education, entrepreneurship, business facilitation, support institutions and economic diplomacy, growing  relevance of new and emerging sectors like ICT, telecom, financial services in the Indo-Mauritian economic and commercial partnership, the perception of the Indian media with regard to Mauritius-routed FDI were the main themes that animated this session.

4. The second panel session was on ‘Manufacturing and Services’. Mr. Gautam Vir, CEO SBM, Mr. Sridhar Nagarajan, CEO Standard Chartered Bank, Mr. J.S. Hiremath, MD and CEO, SBI(M) Ltd, Mr. Saleem Beebeejaun, CEO, BAI Group and Mr.   Cedric de Speville, President, MCCI were the panelists. The discussion was moderated by Mr. Deva Armoogum, partner KPMG.

5. Speakers at the workshop include representatives of leading players in the field of trade, industry and manufacturing, banking, apex chambers of commerce and industry, Board of Investment, trade and investment promotion agencies, etc. Challenges in entering the banking sector in India, new developments and ideas that could recast the Indo-Mauritian economic and commercial partnership by using emergent opportunities in the African market, procedural, cultural and scale-related issues when doing business with India, the need to be daring and risk-taking to enter the Indian market, the importance of identifying a particular value chain before investing in India, branding of Mauritian products in India, cooperation in Francophone BPO sector, etc were the main themes discussed.