Huge business opportunities for Indian food, beverages industry in Canada: TPCI

Indian businesses need to explore the opportunities in Canada as the North American country can be a very important market for the domestic food and beverages companies, trade promotion body TPCI said on Saturday.

The Trade Promotion Council of India (TPCI) said that the food sector has shown phenomenal growth to the tune of 27 percent in the markets such as the US and Canada.

"We feel that Canada can be a very important market for Indian food and beverages industry as Canada has a large population, about 2.4 million, of the Indian diaspora," TPCI Chairman Mohit SIngla said in a statement.

He said that the council in association with the High Commission of India in Ottawa organised a virtual buyer-seller meet on food and beverages products recently.

Quoting High Commissioner Ajay Bisaria, the council said this was the first virtual buyer-seller meet during the lockdown period.

"It is a very positive sign that we are looking beyond the pandemic to go into a recovery phase for the business. Indian ethnic and organic food has huge demand in Canada and is witnessing good growth. Food sector will be more than positive overall," Bisaria said.

India's top exports to Canada include pharma, automobiles, frozen shrimps, gems and jewellery, iron and steel pipeline for gas, and plastics.

The main imports are dried and shelled lentils, paper roll for newsprint, coal, petroleum and crude oil, potassium chloride as fertiliser, and unworked diamond.

The bilateral trade between the two countries has increased to USD 6.28 billion in 2018 to USD 6.8 billion in 2019, the council said.