VDMA, an association of German machine tool manufacturing companies, recently celebrated the 20th anniversary of their Managers Navigator publications in India. With the trade between India and Germany in 2010 having reached Euro 15.4 billion, the event threw light on the German-Indian trade relations and on the topic of mechanical engineering in detail. The guests of honour at the event were Dr Leopold-Theodor Heldman, Consul General of the Federal Republic of Germany, Aman Chadha, Chairman of the Engineering Export Promotion Council (EEPC), Stefan Prasse, General Manager, VDMA Verlag GmbH, Frankfurt and Rajesh Nath, Managing Director, VDMA India. The association has marked 2011 as the ‘year of Germany’ in India and this will be followed by ‘Year of India’ in Germany. Opening the event, Prasse said, “to begin with, let us turn to the latest figures from the mechanical and plant engineering sector in Germany. During the first six months of 2011, goods movement from Germany to India totalled 5,152 million. Of this, 1,663 million were related to machine deliveries. This equates to 32.3 per cent of the total goods movement from Germany to India, and it underlines the importance of this industry segment to trade relations between Germany and India.” Taking the topic of bilateral relations further was Dr Heldman. He averred, “in the last five years, bilateral trade between our countries has increased by more then 100 per cent, growing from a trade volume of 7.6 billion Euros in 2005 to 15.5 bn Euros in 2010. This is something which we can be proud of.” He attributed the driving force for this growth to the high demand in the Indian market. Providing momentum to the vibrant relations of Indo-German very soon VDMA would be inaugurating a new project titled ‘Germany and India 2011/2012: Infinite opportunities, which would showcase the potential of Germany as a partner for India and will bring together 200 projects from various fields to Mumbai in November and will be held in six other cities in India.
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