Belgium boasts a unique location at the crossroads of European trade. The country has one of the most dynamic and open economies in the world. Foreign trade is the lifeblood of the Belgian economy. Exports and imports account for more than 80% of its GDP; Belgium is the 15th largest exporter of goods worldwide and the 13th largest exporter of services, and is also among the top 10 destinations for foreign direct investment in the world. With this in mind, it comes as no surprise that Belgium was again recognized in 2010 as the most globalized country in the world, for the fourth year in a row.

Business relations between Belgium and India are flourishing. Belgium is currently India’s 10th most important trading partner with total bilateral import and export that has reached USD 15 billion in 2010-2011, showing a dramatic increase of 50% as compared to fiscal year 2009-2010. Within the European Union, Belgium is India’s 2nd largest trading partner, preceded only by Germany. There are close to 150 Belgian companies formally established in India and several of the most distinguished, international Indian companies are active in Belgium. For six consecutive years, Belgium has been considered as the most suitable location for investments in logistics and distribution (Cushman & Wakefield, European distribution report). The country lies at the heart of the biggest concentration of purchasing power in the world, and is world-renowned for its logistics facilities and expertise.

The seminar showcased the advantages of using Belgium as a European hub for warehousing and distribution. The event especially targeted Indian exporters to the EU who want to streamline their operations in Europe either by setting up a distribution centre in Belgium or by partnering with local logistics players. The aim was to explore the advantages of Belgium, and its regions, as a gateway for Indian companies to doing business with Europe.

The seminar was addressed by H.E. Mr. Pierre Vaesen, Ambassador of Belgium to India; Mr Ajay Sahai, Director General & CEO,FIEO; Mr. P Ratna Rao, Immediate Past President & Vice President, BLBA. Besides senior global logistics experts from Belgiam Ports like Antwerp, Zeebrugge & Liege were also present.  A large number of senior representatives from leading SMEs and logistics companies were present.

HE Mr. Pierre Vaesen, Ambassador of the Kingdom of Belgium said “Belgium is located at the very centre of purchasing power in Europe, and acts as the access gate to Europe for Indian goods.” He invited Indian companies looking to invest in Belgium to make use of the new trade and opportunities as “the Broad-based Trade and Investment Agreement between India and the EU will be concluded by the end of this year.” Click here for the Address of Ambassador Pierre Vaesen.

In his address Mr Ajay Sahai observed that EU is an important trading partner of India and as a region EU is India’s 3rd largest trading partner in the world. India’s trade with EU grew at a CAGR of over 15% during the last decade from USD 21 bn in 2000-01 to over USD 91 bn in 2010-11. Today, EU has a share of nearly 15% in India’s total trade of USD 620 bn. Although, the growth of trade has been sluggish in comparison with India’s trade with regions like LAC, West Africa and WANA where India trade recorded a CAGR of over 30% in the last decade, but the trade consistency and rising trade volumes between India and EU brings back the confidence for a deeper trade partnership between the two in future.

Referring to the FTA between India and EU, Mr Sahai informed that over 14 rounds of discussions have already taken place since 2007 and we are very optimistic that FTA may be signed during 2012.The FTA officially known as Broad Based Trade and Investment Agreement (BTIA) could be one of the world’s largest Free Trade Agreement

Senior global logistics experts from Belgian ports including port of Antwerp, Zeebrugge & Liege gave detailed presentations on world class facilities for multi-modal transportation, warehousing and distribution. Besides success stories of Indian exporters, Interlogistics N.V and investors, PSA Zeebrugge, on warehousing and distribution services in Belgium were highlighted.

The meeting was followed by a nice networking lunch with some delicious Indian dishes!

Thank you to all the participants who made this event a success!

Below are some pictures of the event, as well as the presentations of the speakers.

Presentations of speakers.

Pictures of the Seminar

3B is Europe’s leading manufacturer of fibreglass for reinforcement of thermoplastics and thermoset polymer applications, and is a preferred supplier to global leaders in industries, including automotive and wind energy. The acquisition of 3B, will open up the gates of the developed markets in Europe for the Binani group.

The Belgian company has two manufacturing units, one in Belgium and the other in Norway, with the total operating capacity at 1.5 lakh tonnes per annum. 45% of its 3B’s customers are in Germany, while The Netherlands and Belgium has 14% each.

Binani will now become a prominent supplier to industries such as automotive, wind energy, electrical, electronics, marine, infrastructure and transportation, primarily in Europe, where approximately 90 per cent of 3B’s customers are based.

For more information please refer to the links below:

The Economic Times: http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-02-02/news/31017357_1_binani-industries-fibreglass-acquisition

Business Standard: http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/binani-buys-belgian-fibreglass-company-3b-for-euro-275-mn/463495/

Mr. Abel Garamhegyi, Managing Director of Barco India has accepted to be a part of the BLBA executive committee. Mr. Jos De Clercq, First Secretary Trade and Investments (Flanders) was also introduced and welcomed to the BLBA executive committee.

After this, Mr. P Ratna Rao continued to present the Annual Report for the year 2010-2011. Goals of the Association, past as well as future ones, were presented.  A list of planned future events was presented to the members, and they were asked to bring in their views and ideas.

After the Annual Report, Treasurer Mr. Ailawadhi presented the financial report for 2010-2011. The financial report was accepted by the members present. This presentation was followed by an open discussion regarding BLBA future events for 2012-2013. The events to look forward to are many, for example an invitation to EU President to speak on EU-India relations, and a visit to a Luxembourg company this year.  The next BLBA event planned for February is a Seminar on logistics, to portray the logistics facilities of Belgium as a gateway to Europe for Indian exporters.

After this interesting open discussion, we had the much awaited speech of the evening, a Special Address by H.E. Mr. Pierre Vaesen, Ambassador of Belgium to India. Mr. Vaesen started off with a mention of the booming bilateral economic relations between India and Belgium. He took our attention to the fact that 10 % of the EU export is Belgian, and that Belgium is the second EU trading partner of India, only behind Germany. More and more Indian companies are investing in Belgium and at present Indian investments in Belgium sum up to 1.12 billion euros. He also mentioned that 150 Belgian companies are present in India at the moment.

H.E. spoke about the role of BLBA in the booming Belgian-Indian economic relations. He stated that BLBA will need to adapt to a changing role of the business association, and to the economic changes between the two countries. The added value of BLBA is providing useful information on bilateral relation as well as networking to exchange experiences and practices. Some of the prime tools to implement this added value are an increased number of Seminars and lectures. H.E. Mr. Vaesen also mentioned that in order to achieve this, BLBA is relying completely on its membership. The organisation must be geared and avoid the bureaucracy. The top priority of the association should be to promote business between the countries. The Belgian Ambassador said that the Embassy is committed to support the role of the BLBA and that he looks forward to a fruitful collaboration with BLBA. H.E. also thanked Mr. P Ratna Rao, Past President, Acting President as well as Vice-President of the Association, for his commitment and excellent contribution to the BLBA.

This Special Address was followed by a Vote of Thanks by Ms. Yasuko Muller, Deputy Head of Mission at the Embassy of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, New Delhi.

Mr. P Ratna Rao finally thanked the members present, and a bouquet was handed over to H.E. Mr. Pierre Vaesen for the Embassy`s support to the Association.  Also, Mr. Ravi Ailawadhi was thanked with flowers for his excellent contribution as the treasurer of the Association for the past 11 years.

After the meeting, there was a networking session with cocktails and snacks, followed by a delicious dinner!

Thank you everyone for your time and continuous support to the Association!

Wind down the workweek with your favourite Belgian Beer and delicious snacks! And for the early birds, there`s a special offer of free Belgian Beer sponsored by the Wallonia Export & Investment Agency (AWEX).

A Fashion show by Surreal, winter special Gluh beer, music band and – of course – your favorite selection of the finest Belgian beers at discounted price!

We would like to thank our event partners Cerana, The Embassy of Belgium, Wallonia Export & Investment Agency, Flanders Investment & Trade and The Royal Plaza.

Bring along your family, colleagues & friends!
Until then, Cheers!

Cerana
Embassy of Belgium
Wallonia Export & Investment Agency
Flanders Investment & Trade
The Royal Plaza

The incubator is located 5 minutes away from the international airport and at 10 minutes distance from the Pune station.

The incubator offers to the Walloon entrepreneurs all the related services with comfort and optimization of their local integration: an equipped office, air-conditioned, with internet access. With framing and support of an experienced international team who will largely facilitate the success new Walloon projects in India.

It gives me a great pleasure to be with you this afternoon and share my views at the European Business Group and Belgium, Luxemburg Business Association Renewable Energy Seminar. The organisers are doing a commendable work to facilitate greater dialogue and cooperation between European Business Houses and Indian industry. I understand such events are organized at regular intervals on various topics ranging from sector related issues to business opportunities in India.

As you are aware India is developing at a pace that is not easily matched by many others. However, the fact remains that our growth is constrained by Energy supply and availability. It is estimated that in order to sustain a growth rate of over 8% through the next two decades, we would need to grow our primary energy supply by 3 to 4 times and electricity supply by at least 5 to 7 times of our current consumption.

India is endowed with a substantial renewable energy resource base There is a potential of over 50 GW electric power capacity from wind energy. Solar photovoltaic and solar thermal energy has the potential to generate around 30-50 MW per square km. of area. Small hydro and Biomass could add another 40 GW capacity. Furthermore, there exists significant potential from decentralized distributed applications.

Ministry of New and Renewable Energy has a wide range of programmes on research and development, demonstration and promotion of renewable energy for rural, urban, commercial and industrial applications as well as for grid interactive power generation. Ministry adopts a three-fold strategy for the development, promotion and use of renewable energy technologies across the country : (a) providing budgetary support for research, development and demonstration of technologies; (b) facilitating institutional finance through various financial institutions; and (c) promoting private investment through fiscal incentives, tax holidays, depreciation allowance and remunerative returns for power fed into the grid.

India today stands among the top five countries of the world in terms of renewable energy capacity. We have an installed base of over 22 GW, which is around 11 per cent of India’s total power generation capacity and contributes over 6 per cent to the electricity mix. Investment in renewables grew by 25% last year and contributed nearly $3.8 billion. India today ranks 8th in the world as far as attracting investments into renewable energy is concerned. However, this is just the beginning. The National Action Plan on Climate Change mandates an increase in the share of renewable power in the electricity mix to 15 per cent by the year 2020. My Ministry has already developed an action plan that aims at accelerating the deployment of renewable energy. We have set up a target of around 72 GW of renewable power including 20 GW solar capacity by 2022.

In Indian context, I feel renewable energy has a major role to play in providing ‘energy access’ over and above energy security and environmental sustainability. Today, about 40 percent population in India have no access to electricity. Studies indicate that the per unit cost of electricity increases by Rs.1 per kilometer of grid extension. It is when we begin to rethink the fossil-fuel led centralized electricity supply model that the significance of renewable energy becomes apparent. In its decentralized or standalone avatar renewable energy is the most appropriate, scalable and viable solution for providing power to thousands of villages and hamlets. In terms of speed of implementation, quality and cost, decentralized renewable energy could prove to be the most effective and democratic component of our village electrification programme. By providing energy access to be most disadvantaged and remote communities, renewable energy has become one the biggest drivers of inclusive growth.

Renewable energy applications have the great advantage of meeting decentralized needs other than rural electrification too. Over 25 GW power is currently generated by diesel. Over 1 million tonnes of furnace oil is used annually for meeting incremental process-heat requirements. Solar and biomass energy can save both by producing process heat as well as power. With oil prices going up and solar prices coming down, the tipping point is reaching for large scale off grid development. Quite naturally, industries facing power shortage, telecom towers using diesel, agricultural pump sets using diesel, large kitchens using LPG are promising candidates for this effort. All these applications have the potential of saving hundreds of thousands of litres of diesel, kerosene and LPG annually. They will spawn new financial and business models as well as an acceptance of service delivery in a distributed manner that supports local entrepreneurs with low cost funds.

Even though the distributed use of renewable energy is high on our agenda, we are not unaware of the enormous potential of renewable energy in generating and feeding power to the grid. In January 2010, the Government of India launched the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM). This is a unique and ambitious Mission that aims to establish India as a global leader in solar energy. The Mission aims to enable 20,000 MW of grid-connected solar energy being deployed in India by 2022 and 1100 MW by 2013 itself. Our Ministry has allotted 37 projects of 620 MW capacity through a transparent tariff discounting process. This has helped in reducing the average tariff by about 30%. Besides over 75 small projects of 1-2 MW each have been allotted for installation at the tail ends of the grid.

As a result of these new projects, we expect to have over 300 MW of grid connected solar power plants before the end of 2012. Entrepreneurs and developers-both local and foreign overwhelmingly participated in bidding process for the first phase of the projects. Manufacturers too have increased capacities and committed investments. The number of active module manufacturers is now 60 from 40, two years ago. Many new companies are planning to set up integrated manufacturing plants. Buoyed by this success, we are planning an even more ambitious Phase –II of the Mission. We have set up a totally autonomous Section 25 Company, the Solar Energy Corporation of India to aggressively pursue the planning and implementation of the Mission. We have amended the National Tariff Policy to introduce solar specific renewable purchase obligations, starting with 0.25% in the first phase of the Mission and leading to 3% by 2022. We have initiated trading of renewable energy certificates. All these steps will create many new opportunities outside the Mission.

Wind energy continues to contribute significantly to our renewable energy matrix. With over 15 GW installed capacity, India competes globally in manufacturing and deployment and occupies the fifth position in the world. Our policy framework in wind energy generation is extremely investor friendly. An attractive feed-in tariff, supportive regulatory regime, fiscal and promotional incentives and generation based incentives provide a strong foundation for the growth of the sector. Indian manufacturers have come of age both in terms of the size of the turbine as well as technology. The newer wind energy generators have lower land requirements and lower O&M costs. There has been an increase in the hub heights of the wind turbines in order to harvest the wind potential more effectively. An indigenization level up to 80% has been achieved in machines.

Biomass, which is a carbon neutral fuel source of energy, holds considerable promise for India. Our surplus biomass material is estimated to be about 150 million tones; this could potentially be used to generate about 16 GW of power. Apart from providing relief from power shortages, power projects based on biomass would generate employment in our rural areas. They could also help the stabilization of electricity grid in such areas. We are working towards a National Bio-energy Mission. This mission will which will help device a policy and regulatory environment to provide a predictable incentive structure for rapid and large-scale capital investment in biomass energy applications and encourage development of rural enterprises for project development and sustainable operation of bioenergy systems. Dedicated energy plantations on degraded wastelands are one of the first steps in this direction.

The challenge before us in the renewable energy sector, generally and, in India, particularly is to reduce the per-unit cost of renewable energy. Hence, there is a continuous need to innovate, to increase efficiencies and bring down costs. Innovations can result from better research and indigenous technologies. That is why, research and development in renewable energy is such a major area of action. I firmly believe that we need a whole new ecosystem involving business, academia and government in a symbiotic research effort. We need to involve prominent research and academic institutions as well as industry to develop technology roadmaps and initiate time-bound, multi-disciplinary research.

The Indian power sector has witnessed the presence of major European multinationals for a long time. The EU companies can play an important role to manage the growth of the energy demand from renewable energy sources. To tackle the challenges of energy security and climate change and energy access, EU companies can play a vital role to provide service to the Indian economy, specially the rural economy.

The European companies have occupied a special place for quality in the Indian mind. With the intensification of the competition in the renewable technology, quality and reliability should also be a dimension that should be used by the customers to select the technologies. There should be scope for the EU companies to be adapted in the Indian conditions so that the technologies can perform well under the Indian conditions.

We hope that European Business Houses would reprioritize and move towards having more investments in India in renewable energy sector. This is a win-win situation both for the business community as well as the Government which is duty bound to ensure to adequate supply of energy to its people.

I wish the Seminar a great success and hope the presentations and deliberations made by the experts including from my Ministry will provide important information in developing bilateral and multilateral business and technical collaborations.

Thank you,

Jai Hind.

Belgium is home to a legendry beer culture with more than 800 brands of Beer. At Belgian Beer Fridays one can discover the best that Belgium has to offer whether it is the Trappist Beers of Chimay, still brewed by monks in an abbey, or the iconic Duvel, a “Devil” of a beer at 8.5% alcohol, the farmhouse beers of Saison Dupont or the fruit beers of Liefmans, said H.E. Mr. Pierre Vaesen, Ambassador of Belgium to India.
Mingle, Network and Imbibe. There is no better way to ring in the weekend. Belgian Beer Fridays are perfect to relax and sip-in the finest Belgian Beers and relish the festivity with amazing offers and discounts. With interesting offers like1+1 on Belgian Beers throughout the evening, the first 75 guests got a free beer courtesy of Wallonia Investment and Special discounted rates on Belgian snacks and food.

Thank you all for being there and making it such a wonderful evening!

Below are some pictures of the event.

Belgium’s not all chocolate!

Marking the beginning of Belgian beer Fridays in the city, this do saw guests chilling out and chatting over clinks and goods ol’ Belgian ale. The event, organized by The Embassy of Belgium at Hotel The Royal Plaza, saw Ambassador Pierre Vaesen and Madam of the Embassy of Kingdom of Belgium, Jean Pierre Muller, designers Gautam Gupta, Parul Grover, former director of CBI Joginder Singh, designer Leena Singh and ghazal singer Ghulam Ali.

Wind down the workweek with your favourite Belgian Beer and delicious snacks! And for the early birds, there`s a special offer of free Belgian Beer sponsored by the Wallonia Export & Investment Agency (AWEX).

We would like to thank our event partners Cerana, The Embassy of Belgium, Wallonia Export & Investment Agency, Flanders Investment & Trade and The Royal Plaza.

Bring along your family, colleagues & friends!
Until then, Cheers!

Cerana
Embassy of Belgium
Wallonia Export & Investment Agency
Flanders Investment & Trade
The Royal Plaza