India and Germany to Strengthen Bilateral Cooperation by Encouraging Collaboration among Businesses

By: Asia Business Outlook Team | Thursday, 20 July 2023

Robert Habeck, Germany's Vice Chancellor and Minister of Economic Affairs and Climate Action, said on July 20 that India and Germany want to strengthen bilateral cooperation and increase investment and collaboration among businesses. On Thursday, he arrived in India for a three-day visit.

Habeck told reporters on the sidelines of the Indo-German Business Forum in New Delhi that China is Germany's largest trading partner and that many German and European companies have invested there.

"It is a massive market, and this is true for India and the United States, for example." On the other hand, we see that being dependent on a single market may be a risk, especially if we see that economic issues are not politically neutral, that interests are intertwined in economic relations," he said.

He went on to say that "we can't decouple from China," but that de-risking and diversification are critical.

Diversification, he explained, means that other alliances, such as the Indo-German alliance, will become more important.

"My understanding from future discussions with Indian partners is that the same is true for India." So there is a mutual interest from both the German and Indian sides in strengthening our cooperation and bringing more companies together, bringing more investments, and creating a common trade sphere as an answer to not becoming too dependent on only one country, which from the German side is also China," he said.

According to him, Russia's aggression against Ukraine is unprecedented, and it has destroyed the European peace order established after World War II.