COIMBATORE: German Ambassador Philipp Ackermann said the signing of the Foreign Trade Agreement (FTA) between India and Germany would be held before the end of the year.
Addressing the press on the sidelines of the meeting of the German Indian Round Table-Coimbatore Chapter on Thursday, Ackermann said that it was necessary to accelerate the process of signing the agreement.
"We concluded the FTA in January. There is now a procedure called legal scrubbing. Now the text goes to all the legal services from both sides; then it has to be translated into all the official languages of the European Union, and once that's happened, we will see the signature, after which it then goes to the European Parliament. It is fair to say that there is a good chance that before the end of the year, the signatures would be done. With an FTA, many German companies will look at India with renewed interest," he said.
Ackermann said both countries have a fairly good trade volume, but there is a lot of room for improvement. "The German-India trade volume is about $50 billion, which is $33 billion in goods and $ 17 billion in services. It's by far the biggest of any European country. We can increase this trade volume. The trade balance is rather good on both sides. Germany has a slight surplus with regard to trade in goods; on the service side, India has a slight surplus. So, it comes out as a balanced trade volume."
On the impact of the Middle-East war on oil and energy, he said, "The war is having a huge impact on our economies. The oil and gas prices are going up. We all hope that this war will end sooner rather than later and that we will go back to a normal distribution of fossil fuels. It will certainly not stop tomorrow, but let us hope in the weeks to come."
Michael Hasper, Consul General at the German Consulate in Chennai; K Ramasamy, Chairman of Roots Group; and GD Rajkumar, Managing Director of the GEDEE Group were present.