COMMENTARY: Halonen sells Finland in India

After the China syndrome, the Finns have caught a highly infectious disease: India fever

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By Tuomo Pietiläinen
     
      A sales rep from the waste treatment and environmental management company Ekokem slithers quietly out of sight down a corridor at the Park Hotel in New Delhi when she hears I am a Finnish journalist.
      A researcher from the business development and venture capital foundation SITRA (The Finnish Innovation Fund) is sitting in the lobby of the same hotel and looking for a rental apartment from the Indian capital's crowded property market, in order that he might be able to get down to work on promoting cooperation between Indian and Finnish universities.
      After the China syndrome, the Finns look to have have caught the highly infectious disease of India fever.
     
Even small companies from the Finnish provinces want to come and take a look - either publicly or in secret - at what 1.1 billion pairs of hands or 10 million super-talented individuals could do for their own particular operations.
      Leading politicians are shuttling around India with a curious degree of vim and vigour, in spite of the fact that politically speaking Finnish-Indian relations are not really anything to get steamed up about.
      In recent months the Minister for Foreign Trade & Development and the Prime Minister have both paid a visit to India. This week the Minister for Trade and Industry and President Tarja Halonen had discussions with the Indian Prime Minister and other members of the country's political elite.
      Since there are basically no bilateral political problems between the two nations, Halonen and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh kept themselves warm by talking about such matters as the challenges facing the UN in the years immediately ahead.
     
Finland's Moominmama has been brought to India on a trade promotion visit. The practical work is being carried out by a trade delegation led by Antti Herlin, the chairman of the Confederation of Finnish Industries (EK). The travelling party includes senior executives from several companies already doing a lot of business in India.
      Herlin himself is Chairman of elevator and escalator manufacturers Kone, but the plane also carried representatives of other companies that have already put down roots in India, such as Metso, TietoEnator, and Nokia. Another to have come along to look at the market opportunities is the Lappset Group, which makes playground equipment and park furniture.
      Two other Finnish firms with large business interests in India are the EMS company Elcoteq and the marine power and energy giant Wärtsilä. In addition to these players, around 60 smaller Finnish enterprises have set up some kind of bridgehead in India.
     
The other side of the coin is that there are roughly a dozen Indian firms that have acquired small Finnish IT-workshops. For instance, Wipro, one of the world's largest IT companies, bought out the Rovaniemi-based Saraware in June last year. Saraware provides design and engineering services to telecoms companies and has around 200 employees.
      Of the Finnish companies with a presence in India, Nokia has been the most successful, and industry estimates suggest it has become the largest foreign-owned company in the country. Nokia is the overwhelming market leader in sales of mobile handsets and mobile networks in a land where more than five million new mobile connections are taken out each month.
      Nokia's own not inconsiderable muscle has doubtless been quite enough to take India even without the flanking support of the politicians, but for smaller companies, the presence of the President or a minister or two is important to provide a foot in the door.
     
Though smallish on the world's airline stage, the national carrier Finnair made a decent-sized splash during Halonen's visit with the announcement that it would be opening up a daily direct connection between Helsinki and Delhi and five flights a week to Mumbai (the former Bombay). Finnair had initially introduced three weekly flights to Delhi last autumn.
      The arrival and departure slots at both these Indian airports are so much at a premium that it is very unlikely they would have been forthcoming without some Finnish political PR being applied. Finnair have also secured themselves a little future room for expansion in the shape of an option on two additional non-stop connections to Mumbai.
     
India is a good example of a country whose significance to the Finnish economy does not show up in the official trade statistics: India's share of all Finnish exports in early 2006 came to around 0.6 per cent, and the share of imports was just 0.3 per cent. With these figures, India was the 29th largest export destination for Finnish firms, and 35th in terms of countries Finland is buying from.
      Indian textiles and clothes have accounted for a good deal of the imports, while the Finns have sold heavy machinery and equipment.
      The statistical illusion arises from the fact that the goods flows of Nokia and other Finnish companies do not pass through Finland.
      Another thing that does not find its way into the statistical tables is design and engineering projects, together with the outsourcing of other brainpower.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 24.1.2007
     
The writer visited India at the end of November 2006.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  President Halonen: Kyoto Treaty increases use of nuclear energy (23.1.2007)

Links:
  Presidential Website : President Halonen visited India

TUOMO PIETILÄINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
tuomo.pietilainen@hs.fi