Minister Skinnari to lead a trade mission to India

Minister Skinnari’s visit aims to strengthen the commercial and economic cooperation between Finland and India that is already picking up pace. India has a population of 1.4 billion people, and its economic growth has been around seven per cent in the past few years. Its political and economic weight will only increase in the future. Parts of Minister Skinnari’s programme and meetings in India will be a collaboration with Norway’s Minister of Trade and Industry Jan Christian Vestre. As the Nordic countries are the world’s leading producers of green and sustainable industrial solutions, Finland and Norway complement each other well on India’s large markets.

The main objectives of the visit are associated with sustainability and digitalisation and with promoting mobility between the countries. The discussions will be based on the outlines agreed jointly by Finland’s Prime Minister Sanna Marin and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi in spring 2021.

“India offers Finnish companies a vast and continually growing market, and it will be easier for them to tap on that potential thanks to the more frequent flight connections between our countries. India is an opportunity that hopefully a growing number of Finnish companies will seize,” says Minister Skinnari.

In New Delhi, Minister Skinnari will meet India’s Minister for Electronics and Information Technology, Minister of Commerce and Industry, Minister of Tourism, and Minister of Civil Aviation. In Mumbai, he will meet Minister of Industries of the state of Maharashtra. In addition, Minister Skinnari will have high-level meetings with Indian diversified companies, Finnish companies present in India and representatives of academic think-tanks.

In Mumbai, Minister Skinnari will inaugurate Finland’s new Consulate General. Mumbai is India’s financial centre and the capital of the state of Maharashtra that has a population of more than 120 million people. Finland’s Consulate General in Mumbai will have strong focus on commercial and economic cooperation.

Inquiries

• Pirjo Alijärvi, Special Adviser to the Minister for Development Cooperation and Foreign Trade, tel. +358 50 323 6710
• The email addresses of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs are in the format firstname.lastname@formin.fi.