The Hindu Business Line : Trade promotion body charts plans to offer space for global fairs

New Delhi, Nov. 21 With manufacturing and services sector industries getting relocated to India and China, the India Trade Promotion Organisation (ITPO) has drawn a blueprint to offer space at competitive rates for mounting trade fairs and exhibitions to countries from West Asia, Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), South East Asia, and South Asia.

“These countries would find participating in trade fairs in India and China far more cost effective than in developed country like Germany and Japan because demand is high and the market is here,” the Chairman and Managing Director, ITPO, Ms Sheela Bhide, told Business Line here in an interview.

The new CMD of the prestigious trade promotion organisation said India’s trade is getting diversified in products and destinations and if industry demands a very specialised fair on pharma, jewellery, leather, and auto components, ITPO would do it.

Support to States

Ms Bhide said that being a shareholder in the trade promotion body of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and the provider of technical support to the new Guwahati trade promotion body, ITPO is supportive to pro-active States for holding trade fairs.

She said ITPO is signing soon a Memorandum of Understanding with the World Trade Centre in Mumbai, and being a “mother organisation”, ITPO would bolster all such regional initiatives for trade fairs across the country.

She said that “we need to move to more specialised fairs. It is not just one major fair like the Indian International Trade Fair (IIFT) which showcases the development, culture and tradition of India but we need now more and more specialised fairs which are B2B, and high-end products for which India is competitive globally now”.

With the Indian economy getting globally integrated and exports cranking up a 25 per cent growth in dollar terms, certainly trade fairs and exhibitions are instruments for accelerating economic growth and this is attested by the huge increase in the last four to five years in demand for fairs, she said.

Foreign exhibitors

Though a lot of domestic private parties desire to set up their exhibitions here, which ITPO is fully supportive of, it is also encouraging foreign exhibitors to come and display their products, she said, adding that in the last couple of years more foreign companies had sought space to showcase their products and processes.

Ms Bhide said ITPO would organise 18 or 19 fairs at Pragati Maidan, its major trade fair spot here, besides holding 85 fairs in other cities in collaboration with State Governments throughout the year. Justifying the holding of the mega fair for multi-products, she said India’s consumer industry is developing fast with a rising middle class population and consumers demanding new products and technology.

“One or two large multi-product trade fair gives us good opportunity to showcase the consumer industry and also give a little more margin of profit which would be used to cross-subsidise the holding of trade fairs for up and coming products that remain to be nurtured,” she added.

Rate for space

The ITPO chief said that for the last two years the rates for space have not been revised because the domestic industry has its own problems in meeting its rising overhead expenses. However, as the demand for space has far exceeded capacity and appreciating Indian rupee has knocked off the margins of the organisation by 25 to 30 per cent, “we may have to revise our foreign participants’ charges from next year”, she hinted.

To a specific query about how much business the ongoing IIFT would generate, she said that as much as 5,000 domestic business visitors and 415 foreign business delegation would have B2B and B2C meeting during the course of the fair, transactions would take time to materialise, and the feedback would be known only much later.

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