Indian Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma proposed on Monday that the target for bilateral South African/Indian trade be increased to $15-billion a year by 2014.

Speaking in Johannesburg, he reported that bilateral trade is growing so fast that the current target of $10-billion annually, which was meant to have been achieved by 2012, will actually be achieved by the end of this financial year (March 31).

“The balance of trade is happily and heavily in favour of South Africa and will remain so,” he highlighted. This is due to large-scale Indian imports of South African gold, diamonds and coal, among other products.

He praised South Africa for providing leadership within the Southern African Customs Union (Sacu) in the negotiating of a preferential trade agreement between Sacu and India.

He stressed that such a PTA would complete a triangle of PTAs within the India, Brazil and South Africa Dialogue Forum group (better known as Ibsa). He pointed out that there was already a PTA between the South American trade bloc Mercosur (full members: Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay) and India, and between Sacu and Mercosur.

“We’ve managed to dynamise that [PTA] process,” highlighted South African Trade and Industry Minister Dr Rob Davies at the same function. “Already, India is our sixth largest export market.” He added that India now ranks eighth as a source of South African imports, and he hoped that the PTA between Sacu and India would soon be concluded.

“There has been a major shift that has taken place in the world,” stressed Sharma. “Today, the emerging markets are the vibrant places of economic growth. South Africa, India and Brazil ... have done well [despite] the worst economic crisis for seven decades. We rebounded quickly. Developed countries are showing recovery but it is uneven and weak.”

Davies asserted that the trade relationship between the two countries was maturing, as they are now trading directly with each other and no longer through the agency of third parties.

“I believe we’ve got a lot of progress to report in the deepening of relations between two very closely allied peoples,” he affirmed. “It is a relationship [that is] strategic and special,” assured Sharma. “Our two countries are open for business,” summed up Davies.

The two ministers were speaking at the official opening of the new Johannesburg office of Indian State-owned trading company, MMTC.