India asks Australia to increase agricultural imports

NEW DELHI: Seeking collaboration in areas including cold chain and warehousing, India today asked Australia to increase imports of agricultural produce such as chickpeas, grapes, groundnuts and lentils.

The move would help in increasing bilateral trade between the countries.

These issues came up for discussion during the meeting between Minister of State for Agriculture Mohanbhai Kalyanjibhai Kundariya and Premier of Western Australia Colin Barnett here.

Australia has expertise in agriculture sector. They have technology to support agricultural productivity across a range of areas.

"Australia has been importing a number of agriculture commodities from other countries of the world and India is in a position to export cake of soyabeans, soyabeans cashewnuts, chickpeas, coconut, coconut oil, ginger, grapes, groundnuts, lentils, oranges and vegetables," an official statement quoting Kundariya said.

He urged Australia to consider importing these commodities from India.

Kundariya also said that India would like to collaborate in the areas of logistics, in particular cold chains and warehousing, agriculture processing, horticulture, fisheries and productivity enhancement.

Australia invited the officials from the Agriculture Ministry to study the model of working for storage of food grains, logistics there.

The bilateral trade between the countries stood at $ 12.12 billion in 2013-14.