FDI in retail: Australia hopeful of nod after state polls

NEW DELHI: Australia is hopeful that India will open up multi-brand retail for foreign investors when the timing is right, possibly after the Uttar Pradesh elections. “Someone famous once said timing is not the most important thing. It is it the only thing,” Bill Shorten, Australian minister for financial services and workplace relations, said addressing journalists.

He said once India gets through some of it’s domestic state polls, then perhaps, something could happen. Shorten is in New Delhi to sign the reworked double taxation avoidance agreement, which would allow both countries to recover money or assets kept in the other country for recovery of unpaid taxes. The protocol was signed by minister of state for finance S S Palanimanickam and Shorten on Friday.

The Australian industry is ‘hungry for opportunity’ and is keenly watching the developments in India. Australia’s largest retailer Woolworths is in partnership with the Tata Group for retailing consumer electronics in India through Tata promoted Infiniti Retail. The five year partnership was in trouble in October this year when the Tata Group refused to renew it, but things have been sorted out.