Flanders-Belgium offers big business opportunity

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI, JULY 19. Availability of value-added logistics services in Antwerp, one of the largest container ports in the world, location in the centre of Europe and easy access to the rest of the European Community market are among the advantages that investors in Flanders province in Belgium enjoy, according to Belgian investment and trade promotion officials.

The Flanders Foreign Investment Office (FFIO), an agency of the government of Flanders-Belgium, with its multi-lingual team, provides for investors from abroad information and escort services for setting up branches, subsidiaries and joint/wholly- owned ventures in Flanders.

The FFIO is interested in particular in assisting companies in sectors such as automobiles and automotive subcontracting, chemical industry, biotechnology and information technology.

Making presentations here at a meeting organised by Export Vlaanderen (Flanders Export Promotion Agency) and the Office of the Trade Commissioner of Flanders at Bangalore in association with the Export-Import Bank of India, officials of the FFIO and other agencies pointed out that Flanders and Belgium as a whole could also be used as a target for test marketing before reaching out to the entire European market.

Among other advantages for investors pointed out by the Belgian agencies is the international status of Brussels, which has more ambassadors than Washington has by way of accredited representation to the European Commission and Benelux (the Belgium-Netherlands-Luxembourg grouping) besides NATO. Flanders has one of the highest levels of per capita incomes in the world and the Flemish economy contributes more than 80 per cent of Belgian exports. Flanders recorded per capita exports of $18,817 in 1997, ranking third in the world after Hong Kong and Singapore.

Besides Antwerp, there are three other ports in Flanders, including Ghent and Zeebrugge. In October-November this year, a team from Antwerp is scheduled to visit Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Chennai.

The sectoral strengths of Flanders, it was stated, lay in logistics and supply chain management, niche areas of IT like speech technology and Internet security, semiconductor technology, post-harvest agricultural technologies including food processing and packaging, fashion, precision manufacturing and engineering, environment technologies and financial and other business services, with competitive real estate costs.

Access by air within two to three hours to most important European capitals, toll-free roads (available only in some of the EC countries), neutrality and financial stability are among considerations that should weigh in favour of opening businesses, preferably in the form of subsidiaries rather than branches, in Flanders, the officials said.

Mr. Ben De Smit, Director-Asia, Foreign Investment Promotion Office of Flanders-Belgium in Singapore, and Mr. Jayant Nadiger, Trade Commissioner of Flanders-Belgium in Bangalore, made presentations on Flanders. Mr. S. Jagadeesh of Dun and Bradstreet India said Belgium had one of the lowest country risks (DB1d), though political risk had slightly increased in recent times. Its payment performance was one of the best in the world.

Mr. K. Muthukumaran of the Exim Bank of India, Chennai, said Flanders provided an ideal entry point for several European markets.

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