The time has come for Australia to invest in India’s trade market

India’s big numbers tell a story of opportunity. With more than 1.4 billion people, it has overtaken China as the world’s most populous nation. Growth in gross domestic product has averaged between six and seven per cent since the start of the century.

About 432 million Indians constitute the nation’s rapidly growing middle class, and this figure is expected to rise to 715 million — 47 per cent of projected population — by 2030–31.

The average age is just under 29, significantly lower than Australia and China. These numbers have the federal government and Australian companies looking to the subcontinent as a significant trading partner and source of growth in the decades to come.

India has had several false starts over the past three decades, where hopes of becoming a global economic powerhouse have not materialised. Recent Bloomberg data also shows its economy is expanding at its slowest pace in four years.

But Mark Bennett, ANZ head of agribusiness in Australia, says there is still reason to be optimistic. “People who’ve been around and trading into this market longer than me tend to think this time is different,” he says. “There’s a lasting opportunity with our trade into India, certainly from an agri point of view, particularly as we see a less impeded trade environment before us.”

Just as the rise of the middle class in China 15 years ago put Australian food on dinner plates in the People’s Republic, India’s middle class will also consume Australian food. How quickly that happens in India’s democracy and more fluid economy, compared to China’s organised five-year planning cycles, remains to be seen.

And while Indian governments will strive to look after its huge and important agricultural constituency, the fact that India has just 3.7 per cent of the world’s arable land, about four per cent of the global freshwater supply, and has to feed a huge population with a burgeoning middle class that will want better quality and more protein-rich foods, means it will have to look overseas.

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