Minister Roberto Alvarez,
Vice Minister Hugo Rivera,
Executive Director Pro Dominicana Viviana Rivero,
Mr. Jay Shroff,
Friends from Trade and Industry of the Dominican Republic,
Members of the trade delegation that is accompanying me,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Let me begin by saying that this is really a very great pleasure to be with all of you today, on what is my first visit to this country and also the first ever visit by an Indian Foreign Minister. To give you a sense of why we are here, I remind you that our two countries established diplomatic relations in 1999, the Dominican Republic set up an embassy in India in 2006. It has taken a little while for us to do so, but we will make up for lost time and I can assure you we have a very good, very active Embassy here and once we established the Embassy, I had made a commitment that I would come personally to formally inaugurate it and that is one of the reasons that I'm here. But there is a larger business context as well for my coming. On this trip I have been earlier to Guyana, to Panama, to Colombia, last year I was in Brazil, in Argentina, in Paraguay, the year before that in Mexico and I mentioned this because this really highlights the increased interest that India has in the Latin American region. That interest is today expressed in a trade turnover that is approaching $50 billion annually, in a growing number of investments in different sectors from energy and agriculture, to mining, to projects of various kinds, to I.T. delivery centers, to pharmaceuticals. So there is a much... there's a conscious intensification of our relationship with Latin America and I would say that in many ways business is leading the way. So this is very much therefore a diplomatic trip, it is a political trip but it is of course a business trip.
Where the Dominican Republic is concerned from a trade which we had of $12 million before we established diplomatic relations 20 years ago, it has today reached almost a billion dollars and a lot of our trade is in pharmaceuticals, in marine products, in two and three wheelers, in iron and steel, in gold and in paper and paper products. I also note that quite a few Indian companies have already established offices here. I see among them is Glenmark Pharmaceuticals, Hetero, Caplin Point and Flagship Biotech and a lot of our big automobile dealers, two-wheeler dealers like Bajaj, Hero and Royal Enfield have actually local dealers. And I also... I'm told that we have started sourcing small cars from India including those which are made by multinational companies in India. In fact as we entered I was speaking to the head of our business delegation and he told me that he himself, his company has had 15 years of business here and they have a number of important distributors. Now we have seen over the years that there have been many more officials and business delegations visiting India, engaging with our business, we saw last year a Dominican delegation at the IND-TEXPO, the textile event in Mumbai at the Global Regulators’ meet which was organized by our Pharmaceutical Export Council; at the India International Garments Fair which was organized by our Apparel Exports Promotion Council and also at the Indiasoft Exhibition which is dealing with computer software. So there is, you know there is already some traction in the business field and I think the challenge for us today is how to scale that up, how to intensify it, how to expand the domains of cooperation and that is the main purpose of our meeting. The delegation that is accompanying me is organized by our premier Chamber of Commerce, the Confederation of Indian Industry and I am given to understand that they are negotiating a cooperation MOU with CONEP of the Dominican Republic in this regard.
Now, along with what is happening on the business side, I want to share with the community that we in the Government, are similarly engaged in stepping up our economic cooperation efforts. There is an agreement between us to conclude a Joint Economic and Trade Cooperation (JETCO) mechanism. This agreement is in the final stages of approval and I expect as soon as I get back to India that it will be done very soon and we hope that JETCO will in many ways become a platform for regular meetings which will address economic and business cooperation opportunities between us.
Today before my discussions with Minister Alvarez and his team, I had the honor of calling on the President and much of our discussion was actually on how to promote the business between our two countries. And there were some areas where quite honestly the opportunities stand out. I would say the most notable among them is pharmaceutical. I would also say and I know this will make Mr. Shroff happy, that Agriculture and that entire domain, that too is something which needs a perhaps more exploration and I'm sure it will be a very, very rewarding one. But at the heart of the issue to us today is, with a $50 billion trade account, what is it we should be doing to take it to a higher level because some of our big regional accounts today, trade accounts are in excess of 100, they're in $100 to $150 billion range. I mean that's really where ASEAN is, that's where the Gulf, is that's where the EU is, that's where North America is. So that's the sort of aspiration which is today driving us that how do I try to at least double this trade in the coming months. And to do that naturally, you know, one part of it is a greater mobility, a better market access, faster regulatory approvals, overall making it easier to do business. But we expect that in many areas more trade will also translate into greater investment. There are many businesses where it makes sense to have a local production, certainly in the post-COVID era where we know how vulnerable supply chains can be, that the economic security of regions depend on having some degree of production within the region. This is not a unique problem to this region, but suddenly we recognize that issue, we would like to actually use it as an opportunity to qualitatively improve our economic cooperation. So in some ways you could say that between the business delegation and me and my team, we're also scouting around for, you know, who are our best partners in this region, which location should we utilize for what purpose, how much of a footprint and how deep a footprint should be developed. So that is really in a sense the conversation which I hope that you would have.
From our side I think we will be presenting you with a sense of the progress today that is taking place in India and it's a progress, which I would really urge you all to pay attention because today after the COVID we are one of the economies which has rebounded very strongly. Despite the problems created by the Ukraine conflict, we are still confident of posting about a six and a half percent growth rate this year. And hopefully much stronger growth rates in the coming period. Our exports have actually gone to a record level, both exports in goods and cumulative exports, which today are closing in on the $800 billion level. We are today the largest recipients of inward foreign direct investments in the world. We are also among the major sources of unicorns. So, we know a country which today says it has a hundred unicorns, is clearly doing well in the domain of startups and Innovation. And we are looking outwards, outwards in terms of goods and services, but also outwards because we realized today that this is a global workplace, that in many domains it is necessary to have the mobility to promote business and we are in fact concluding mobility agreements with many of our partners as well.
So, I am of course very, very appreciative of the fact that today, the establishment of our Embassy last year has given me at least the formal reason Minister to come and visit you. But I want to assure you all that I certainly expect that we will see a regular exchange of visits and conversations at the political level, at the official level but I very much hope at the business level. This August the CII has its annual event business event conclave on Latin America, I mentioned to the President and to Minister Alvarez that we would very much welcome a delegation from the Dominican Republic, I think more or less we agreed on it. So I hope that today's event is the beginning of an even more beautiful friendship.
So once again thank you very much for this opportunity and I wish you a very productive session.