Welcome to Embassy of India

Doing Business In India

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The following basic facts are important:

(i) Most Norwegian businesses can understand English
(ii) Indian visitors need valid Schengen Visa to enter
(iii) Norway have resident embassy in New Delhi.

Norway have the potential for being excellent partner for Indian businessmen in a number of ways. This country have economies that defy stereotyping. This is outside the European Union but in the European Economic Area. It is a highly industrialized economy, but rely on commodity exports: Norway is world's fifth largest exporter of oil as well as natural gas. Norway's 4.7 million citizens enjoy per capita income of approx. $ 66,530 (nominal); $ 43,920 (PPP) per annum. On average, each citizen of this country imports $ 11,000 worth of goods annually and goes abroad twice for tourism. For sixth year running, the UNDP has put Norway at the top of its Human Resource Development table. Under Norwegian law, the entire oil & gas export revenue is invested abroad under Government Pension Fund-Global, which has a total corpus of US$ 357 billion - world's largest FII. It began investing in India in July 2005 and had $ 195 million invested in India on 31.12.2006. There are other large Norwegian investors.

From Indian perspective, Norway offers the following lucrative opportunities:

Trade with Norway

As shown by the latest Norwegian official figures the bilateral trade has witnessed rapid growth:

India -Norway Bilateral Trade from 2001-2010

(all values in NOK million)

Year	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010
India's Exports	870.8	833.9	949.0	1188.7	1372.3	1496.7	1696.5	1965.9	2117	2224.4
India's Imports	434.3	528.8	491.2	867.1	1291.0	2147.2	3394.3	3089.1	3466.8	2548.7
Total Trade	1305.1	1362.7	1440.2	2055.7	2663.2	3643.9	5090.8	5055	5583.8	4773.1
% Change		4.4	5.7	42.7	29.6	36.8	39.7	-0.7	10.5	-14.5

Source: Statistice Norway
15Feb2011

Although Norway may appear to be small market as compared to the EU, they have their attractiveness. Firstly, their consumers have much higher purchasing power and the average prices are significantly higher than the EU-27. Secondly, their consumers are not as highly brand conscious as other Europeans. Thirdly, these countries have limited number of importers and distributors who need being contacted. Lastly, while Indian exports to the EU countries face quite severe domestic and foreign competition, the markets in Norway are relatively easier to enter.

  While traditional Indian exports have been concentrated in textiles and garments sector, lucrative opportunities exist in such sectors as pharmaceuticals, light engineering goods, consumer goods, cycles, two-wheelers, handicrafts, gems & jewellery and processed food items.

   On other hand, Indian importers have shown interest in sourcing Norwegian products and services, esp. those linked to deep off-shore, shipping, hydro-electricity, metallurgy, telecommunications equipment and select areas of IT and BT. India's imports from Iceland are miniscule.

   Relevant to note here that although Norway is not a member of the EU, it is a member of the European Economic Area (EEA) comprising of 31 western and central European countries. It is also a member of WTO and offers the GSP facilities to exports from India. There are no anti-dumping or anti-subsidy measures imposed on any Indian exports.

Investments:

   Norway's assets abroad are estimated to be over US$ 600 billion. Over half of this figure is investments from Government Pension Fund - Global through which the entire oil and gas revenue of Norway is invested abroad. With over US$ 357 billion invested abroad, GPF-G is World's largest such corpus. These investments are managed by the Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM). GPF-G began investing in India in July 2005 and currently holds approximately 59 stocks in BSE scripts totaling around US$ 195 million. Some other private Norwegian investors have also put money in India. For example, in February 2007, Orkla - Norway's largest private group - acquired MTR Foods of Bangalore for US$ 82 million. Given large availability of investible fund in Norway, the country can be an attractive source of capital - including the Venture Funds for Indian businesses.

   In reverse direction, Indian investments in Norway have also begun recently with Aban of Chennai acquiring full control of Sinvest, an off-shore upstream services company, for US$ 1.3 billion on March 30 2007. In September 2007, Aban acquired one more oil rig from a Norwegian company for $ 221 million.

Technology Transfer:

  Norwegian companies and R&D institutions have core competences in high-tech areas such as deep off-shore, Specialised ship-building, fish-farming, hydroelectricity, geo-physical studies and some niche sectors of IT & BT. At the same time, Norwegian economy currently suffers from critical shortage of highly-skilled professionals in many of these areas; Moreover, costs associated with R&D in Norway are very high due to high wages and overheads as well as lack of economy of scale. India can be a very useful force multiplier in this domain.

   Relevant to note here that Indian companies have possibility of any Indo-Norwegian joint venture or technology tie up receiving support and/or concessional finance receiving from Norwegian agencies such as Innovation Norway, Eksportfinans www.eksportfinans.no Innovation Norway www.invanor.no and Norfund www.norfund.no Embassy of India, Oslo would not be able to offer any assistance in this regard.

Information Technology:

   Although Norway has been a late convert to outsourcing to India, the issue is being propelled by high wages and growing shortage of skilled professionals. A recent success story was designing of Orman Lange sub-sea gas platform by 1,200 Indian engineers in Mumbai. A number of Norwegian companies are already actively looking for Indian partners for outsourcing. Further a number of MNC are leveraging their presence in India to outsource Norwegian jobs to India. Presence of Indian IT majors in Norway is increasing substantially and the total number of Indian IT experts in Norway is estimated to be around 100.

   Over past one year, Norwegian businesses have become enthusiastic about either getting skilled manpower from India or outsourcing the work to us. In 2006, 324 Indian professionals were given work permits for Norway - the number is larger than any other country. The issuance of work permits and dependent visas have also been expedited. However, the lack of any bilateral Totalisation Agreement still bedevils high social security costs that Norway imposes on expatriate workers.

Bio-Technology:

   Norway spends over 12% of its GDP on healthcare, which is second highest in the world. The country has very small domestic production capacity for pharmaceuticals and its Bio-Tech R&D capacity is limited by lack of back-up for clinic trials and production. Consequently, Norway and India have decided to promote Bio-Tech collaboration through joint R&D and co-production of vaccines, esp. those meant for immunisation of children. Norwegian Research Council provides some India-specific grants to promote bilateral R&D and production in Bio-Technology sector.

   In case of specific eco-commercial enquiries, the Commercial section of the embassy can be contacted: com.oslo@mea.gov.in, commerce@indemb.no