New Delhi, July 12: It is time for the country to make the most of the business opportunities in central and east Europe. There is a need, however, to evolve a focused programme to recover lost ground in a region that was once the country’s close trading partner. The biggest barrier to this is the absence of a policy framework for the region. To this end, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci) has formed a central and east Europe (CEE) core group.

The group, comprising companies such as Reliance, Wipro, NIIT, IOC, BPCL, Coal India, IP Gas, Bharat Televentures, Cadila and Ernst & Young, seeks to ascertain opportunities and challenges for domestic businesses. The plan is to focus on areas such as chemicals and pharmaceuticals, IT, food processing and banking & finance. At present, major exports to the region are in food and agri products, pharmaceuticals, textiles, transport and equipment.
Central and east Europe comprises Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Macedonia, Poland, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovak Republic and Slovenia. Though India did have a close relation with the region, it lost ground to west Europe, Turkey and China when the region moved from centrally-planned, socialist economy to market-oriented economy. Bureau Report