Estonia to be gateway to Europe market for India: Envoy
Estonia can be the gateway to northern European markets for India once the FTA with the European Union comes into effect, Indian Ambassador Ashish Sinha has said, asserting that the bilateral relationship is on an upswing.
In an interview with PTI, Sinha said there is a robust base of existing trade to be used as a “springboard” for further engagement between India and Estonia when the India-EU free trade agreement comes into force.
The Indian Ambassador to Estonia asserted that the overall bilateral relationship is going from strength to strength and getting stronger. “Going forward, with the India-EU FTA, there will be far more engagement of the small and medium-sized industries, and the dairy and agriculture products from Estonia will find their market
in India. For India, we will have Estonia as a gateway to northern Europe,” Sinha said. Noting that Estonia also offers e-residency, Sinha said many of the Indian businessmen and high-value industrialists have taken Estonia’s e-residency, and about 5,000 Indians are part of the Estonian initiative.
“About over 1,000 Indians have their companies registered under the e-residency programme of Estonia,” he added.
“So, there are elements which provide a basis to use as a springboard when the India-EU FTA comes into force for further engagement. I must tell you that Indian exports to Estonia not only grew but it has overshot their target in the last financial year,” the Indian envoy said. The new and emerging technologies are going to form a major part of the business, he said.
Digital technologies, IT, AI-enabled technologies, software as a service, all these areas have great potential. Estonia is the world leader, and so is India.
“Our digital public infrastructure and our capacity to roll out digital innovations at the population scale, and Estonia’s proven capacity to use digital transformation of its citizen services, both have great capacity to learn from each other and grow,” Sinha said. Asked about India’s perspective on regional security in the context of the Ukraine-Russia conflict, he said India and Estonia are both democracies, have democratic, plural values, respect for international law and want to grow, and for that “we support international peace and security”.
“In that context, Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Moscow and Kyiv both in 2024 and was one of the first leaders to assert that this is not the era of war, this is the era of dialogue and diplomacy. I am sure Estonia also wants peace in its neighbourhood, and we both have similar objectives there,” Sinha said.
