South Africa looking to develop ties with India's SME sector: MEA

Pretoria (South Africa), July 8 (ANI): The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on Friday said South Africa is looking to develop ties with India's small and medium enterprises, both in terms of entrepreneurship development, skill development and financing. "Among the economic issues, one of the key issues that their minister raised was they are looking at India's experience in small and medium enterprises, both in terms of entrepreneurship development, skill development and financing of the SMEs. The discussion focused around the Mudra Bank, skill development scheme that India has started the capacity building programmes and the general economic climate that we are creating to support SMEs," Amar Sinha, Secretary (Economic Relations) in MEA said. Sinha said that in the meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and African President Jacob Zuma, it was decided that their ministers for small enterprises would be visiting India very shortly to have further exchange of view and they would like to use India as a model for their own small and medium enterprise sector. He said President Zuma talked about the sectors that he has identified and noted that India has opened up its FDI regime. Sinha pointed out that political issues like UN Security Council, the upcoming BRICS, NSG and Indian Ocean were also discussed in the meeting. "Two important issues that they flagged are they would like to fully exploit the economic opportunities that come out and also the maritime ocean economy," he added. MEA official spokesperson Vikas Swarup said this was the first bilateral visit by an Indian Prime Minister to South Africa in ten years. "India and Africa have shared a long and historical relationship. In recent times, this has become a modern partnership which has also reflected in the wide range of multilateral interests the two countries have as members of BRICS, of the IBSA, of G20 and also climate change," he added. Swarup said the discussion between Prime Minister Modi and President Zuma covered a very vast area ranging all the way from trade and investment to terrorism and multilateral issues. (ANI)