India and Malaysia need to work closely to deepen bilateral trade relations: Malaysian High Commission

New Delhi, Aug 28 (KNN) Calling India an important trading partner for Malaysia, Malaysian High Commissioner to India Hidayat Abdul Hamid said both countries need to work closely in order to deepen bilateral trade relations.

He was speaking at an interactive session on “Doing Business with Malaysia”, organized by Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) in partnership with High Commission of Malaysia in the capital city.

He said “Our bilateral trade performance has strengthened to USD 14.3 billion in 2017, marking an increase of over 21.8 per cent from USD 11.8 billion in 2016. From January to June this year, the two-way trade has reached USD 7.7 billion.”

With more involvement of India and Malaysia as partners in trade, he expects an increase of USD 15 billion trade performance annually by 2020.

Talking about investment opportunities available in Malaysia, he said the country has many advantages from which India can benefit.

He said “Malaysia's strength in areas like infrastructure, healthcare, construction industry, palm oil and petroleum products had been part of India economic development agenda for many ye­ars. A number of prominent investors from India are already strengthening their foothold in Malaysia and we welcome more investment from India.”

“We are ready to help India to identify right partners, right companies and right facilities to do business in Malaysia,” he added.

Further to scale up bilateral ties between both the countries, he said "we wo­uld like to encourage mo­re importers to source from Malaysia since we have bilateral trade agreement na­mely Malaysia India comprehensive economic cooperation agreement and regional trade agreement na­mely AIFTA.”

Noting that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak had set the annual target of trade at USD 15 billion by 2020, the envoy said he believes that with the current momentum and performance that target “looks promising”.

He said “we just need to put more efforts in realizing that.”

Malaysia is the 25th largest investor in India with FDI close to about 900 million dollar in last 18 years and offers huge opportunities for Indian business in large number of areas including infrastructure, healthcare, manufacturing, information & technology among others.

Senior representatives of Malaysian Economic Agencies - MATRADE, MIDA, Tourism Malaysia, Malaysian Timber Council - MTC and Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) were present during the session to discuss various investment and trade opportunities in Malaysia with Indian industry.