Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in India and South Africa will benefit from a preferential trade agreement expected to be finalised as President Thabo Mbeki visits India this month.
Indian High Commissioner Shiv Mukherjee said at the opening of a seminar on the relationship between SMEs in the two nations that the agreement would eventually lead to free trade agreements between India and South Africa.
Mukherjee said there had been a great number of reciprocal trade fairs and delegations between India and South Africa in the decade after relations between the two countries resumed following the end of the apartheid era, but there needed to be a lot more.
But he made a personal plea for a change to the approach of what he referred to as "wholly Indian exhibitions".
