Potential in High Tech
Bilateral Tie-ups Huge
- Israeli Consul General Orna Sagiv

India shares very cordial and expanding bilateral relations with Israel. In the last few years, trade between the two countries has become more diversified and wide-ranging - from water management in agriculture to advanced technologies and homeland security. For India, where nearly 70 percent of its population depends on agriculture for its livelihood, water management becomes crucial for sustaining and enhancing productivity. Israel, a country tucked in a dry and arid region, has by necessity pioneered water management and developed the revolutionary drip irrigation system, practiced in agriculture the world over today. India and Israel have already signed agreements in the field of agriculture, water management and renewable resources. Israel is more than happy to extend this cooperation further says Orna Sagiv, Israel's Consul General in Mumbai in an interview with Indo-Israel Business. She says that the potential for bilateral trade is huge and economic cooperation, especially in fields such as advanced technologies, are of mutual advantage to both of countries.

As the Consul General in Mumbai, how do you look at the prospects of bilateral relations between India and Israel?
The trade between India and Israel has been expanding constantly. When India and Israel established diplomatic ties in 1992, the bilateral trade was USD200 million. At the end of 2008 the bilateral trade between our two countries was USD4 billion, and we believe that the potential for growth is still huge.

The trade is not only expanding in amounts, but also in variety. If diamonds were about 60-70 percent of the trade up until a few years ago, they consist of about 50 percent and today and the trade and cooperation in other fields have been growing steadily.

Recently we've witnessed more Israeli advanced technologies entering the Indian market, such as desalination plants, advanced security equipment for homeland security purposes (civilian), telecommunications products and more.

The Government of Israel attributes a lot of importance to its relations with India. In the past year, we had visits of three major Israeli delegations to India, in the fields of Homeland Security (HLS), IT and Telecommunication. Reciprocity visits of Indian companies in Israel have been promoted as well.

A large delegation of more than 40 CTO's visited Israel in November, to participate in the "Next Generation Technology Yatra", a specially large event, which took place for the first time, sponsored mainly by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and organized by the CTO Forum (9.9 Media). This event exposed Israel and its high technological capabilities to technological decision makers in the main and largest Indian companies all around India.

Israel is one of the leaders in water management and technology. Could you cite some successful join initiatives in this field?
Since most of the Indian population is involved with agriculture, we believe there's a big potential for cooperation in that field. Being a small country with hardly any natural resources, suffering from arid lands and lack of water, Israel has developed throughout the years very advanced methods and technologies to overcome these problems, saving water and increasing productivity. There's an ongoing cooperation between our two countries in the agricultural field, and we are happy to extend it even more.

In the past few years, Israel has become one of the worlds' most important innovation hubs, especially in the water sector. The drip irrigation, now used very commonly all around the world, was invented in Israel during the 60s. The largest desalination plant is located in Israel and we are the leading country in the world in terms of water reuse - almost 80 percent of all urban waste water is reused for agriculture.

Today Israel can offer diverse solutions from comprehensive management of water resources and water saving irrigation technologies, to cost saving purification, reclamation and desalination methods. We can also offer water security solutions, a problem that may threaten the worlds' water reservoirs in the future.

What is your message to the readers?
Israel and India have been developing the bilateral ties since 1992. The ongoing good and close relations in every field - have been growing steadily and we believe the potential is still huge. The trade and economic relations, especially in fields such as advanced technologies, are of mutual advantage to both of our countries. We regard our Consulate General as a "bridge" and wish to assist business people from both countries to discover the opportunities of the bilateral cooperation and to enlarge the "people to people" contacts between Israel and India.