India's manpower, Finland's tech prowess must be leveraged:Goyal

India's skilled manpower and Finland's high-end tech prowess should be leveraged under the 'Make in India' initiative for an efficient and cost-effective business framework, Power Minister Piyush Goyal said today.

The minister was speaking at the first meeting of 'Indo-Finnish Business Working Group on Energy & Mining' organised by FICCI and Embassy of Finland, New Delhi, according to a FICCI statement.

This meeting was a follow-up after the high-level visit of Goyal to Finland in November 2016, responded by the Finnish delegation visiting India.

The Union minister said in the statement it was commendable that Indian and Finnish companies had come together in just three months to step up the bilateral relations in sectors such as waste-to-energy, solar, bio-energy, electric mobility, smart grids, coal and mining.

He said India had surplus electricity and the technology of converting waste to energy was in use in the country. Thus, India needed technology to transform waste to other forms such as bio-energy, Goyal added.

Finland with its small population had made great strides in the field of innovation, technology and research, and India could learn from such Finnish endeavors, Goyal noted.

The minister said that Finnish companies could help India to scale up technology and fruitful partnerships could be built between the two nations if Finland could align its processes and technology to make them efficient and cost effective for India.

Goyal said that Finnish companies could partner with their Indian counterparts under various government initiatives such as 'Make in India'.

Finnish technologies should be leveraged to improve processes in India, he said, adding Indian private sector should play a proactive role towards forging alliances with their Finnish counterparts.

Finnish companies were already working in various sectors in India and had the capacity to scale up its technology and processes for India and were competitive, said Nina Vaskunlahti, Ambassador, Embassy of Finland, New Delhi.

She said Finland would like to contribute to the Government of India's initiative 'Make in India' and look forward to favourable tariffs.

Vaskunlahti said the aim of the working group was to enhance business prospects between Finland and India. With the support of Finnish and Indian industry the platform had become active in three months of Goyal's visit to Finland which exhibits the keen interest of the two sides in augmenting bilateral relation.