Mustapa Mohamed wants to give a big boost to Indo-Malaysian trade.

Given that the total trade between the two nations was only $12.3 billion in the January to November 2013 period, against Malaysia-China trade of $95 billion, the Minister of International Trade and Industry for Malaysia, sees a huge opportunity to grow the relationship.

“Malaysia and India have very strong cultural and commercial links. Both are familiar with each others’ countries, there is good connectivity with air links. India is a country where we would like to step up our relations on all fronts,” said Mohamed in an interview to Business Line .

In India recently, Mohamed led a delegation of small and medium enterprises for seminars in Bangalore and Chennai.

In Bangalore, he participated in the CII partnership summit and later travelled to Chennai with 17 officials and 30 Malaysian companies. “It’s important to have face-to-face communications; you get more out of it. I can see that Indians are anxious to globalise their business; our markets are not the main markets for them, but there are a lot of opportunities,” he elaborates.

On this trip, Mohamed points out that the Malaysian delegation was not talking only to the big companies, but also to many small ones as the focus is on SMEs in the IT and automotive industries. “A lot of the big companies have already invested in Malaysia, but we are looking at SMEs now,” said the Minister.

In Bangalore, the seminar attracted about 160 Indian companies, while in Chennai over 200 Indian companies participated in the seminar on business opportunities with Malaysia. The seminar in Chennai was jointly organised by CII and MaTrade, the Malaysia External Trade Development Corporation.

As of now, the bilateral trade is in Malaysia’s favour. Trade between the two countries has been on an upward trend – increasing more than four fold in the 2003-12 period. Malaysia’s main exports to India, Mohamed pointed out, were palm oil, electrical and electronic products, crude petroleum, chemicals and transport equipment. Indian exports to Malaysia are refined petro products, live animals and meat, agri-produce and cereal. Mohamed pointed out that some of the big Indian companies such as Reliance and TCS have invested in Malaysia; TCS is a fairly big employer in the ICT sector with 1,300 people, he said.

India, he said, has traditionally relied on investments from Japan, Korea, Europe and the US, but the last five years has seen a lot more investments by Malaysian companies as well. The Mumbai mono rail project, he pointed out, has been constructed by Malaysian company Scomi Engineering, along with L&T.

“Besides receiving investments from India, my main responsibility is to get Malaysian companies to invest here; long-term prospects are good here,” said Mohamed.

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