Italian Prime Minister Meloni plans India visit after German Chancellor

Key European Union states are making an outreach to India, with plans afoot for Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s trip to New Delhi in March, after the scheduled visit of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz later this month.

This would be Meloni’s first visit to India in her current capacity since taking office in October last year. Talks are ongoing between the two sides on the highly anticipated visit, even as both nations look to strengthen their bilateral ties in trade, defence, investment, counter-terrorism and people-to-people relations, ET has learnt.

Meanwhile, German national security adviser Jens Plotner is currently in India ahead of the Chancellor’s trip. Plotner met his Indian counterpart, Ajit Doval, on Monday.


India-Italy ties have been on an upswing. The trend in bilateral trade has been extremely positive since 2019. In 2021, India-Italy trade touched 10.4 billion euros, while between January and August 2022, it was 9.8 billion euros. Italy is not only interested in participating in India's defence sector but also in exploring opportunities for possible transfer of technology.

Italy’s top export item to India is machinery, accounting for 36% of its total shipments. India’s main exports to Italy are metals (iron, steel and aluminium and metal products).

Italy is among India’s top five trading partners in the European Union. India ranks 19th as country of origin for Italy’s imports, accounting for 1.2% of Italian imports. Other items of Indian exports to Italy are ready-made garments, leather, iron ore, motor vehicles, textiles, chemicals, gems and jewellery.

Italy is keen to share its expertise on managing infrastructure of natural gas given its own experience in this sector.

About 140 large Italian companies are active in India — including small and medium companies, the number exceeds 600. Six Italian banks have representation in India. Top sectors attracting foreign direct investment inflows from Italy are automobiles or transportation, food processing, metallurgical industry, textiles and electrical equipment. Indian companies present in Italy are in sectors such as IT, electronics, pharmaceuticals, automobiles, textiles and engineering.

Some of the major Italian companies that have invested in India operate in the priority sectors sketched by the bilateral Action Plan 2020-24: energy transition, manufacturing, lifestyle, infrastructure and food processing.

In particular, promotion of investments in small and medium enterprises and a strategic partnership in energy transition have been the two pillars of strengthening the economic partnership between Italy and India.

In July 2021, the then chief of army staff General MM Naravane visited Italy. The visit of an Indian Army chief to Italy took place after 14 years and at the service chief level the interaction occurred after more than a decade.