Kenya has asked India to increase its current importation of soda ash, precious stones and agricultural products.
Prime Minister Raila Odinga said on Monday that this was the only way to balance trade between the two countries.
According to Mr Odinga, India had remained the main beneficiary of trade between the two countries.
Apart from soda ash and precious stones, India imports horticultural products, coffee, sisal, wool, wet leather, wattle and pyrethrum extracts from Kenya. The PM is attending a global investors summit in the Gujarat state of India.
IT industry
He told the chief minister of the state of Gujarat: “The balance of trade is very much in India’s favour. To change that, we would like India to increase its current importations.”
Mr Odinga said that, apart from learning the successes of the state of Gujarat during the summit, the Kenyan delegation was also keen to explore more opportunities.
One of the areas the delegation was interested in was the IT industry.
“Gujarat has a strong IT industry that had grown from a mere 150 million US dollars in 1991-92 to more than 5.7 billion US dollars at the turn of the century,” said Mr Odinga.
He appealed to the hosts to come and do business in Kenya, saying there was a huge pool of young people graduating from IT colleges who would be major assets for firms interested in investing in the country.
E-governance
Mr Odinga noted that Gujarat had one of the most successful e-governance programmes in India.
“We are keen to learn from your system,” he said.
Gujarat, he said, was the first state to announce a separate port policy, which integrates the development of ports with industrial development and power generation.
Since Kenya was undertaking a major modernisation at the port of Mombasa, Mr Odinga said they hoped to learn more from the Indians.
Source : Daily Nation