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Fedeli seeing success on India trip

'I look forward to debriefing a couple of the North Bay companies on some of the businesses that we visited'

Vic Fedeli, the Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade is leading 12 Ontario companies from the province's information and communications technology and infrastructure sectors on a tour of India, and he says it's been "incredibly successful."

He says with less than $400 million worth of trade with a country of 1.3 billion people, there are huge opportunities for the province and local companies.

“Machinery and goods and services that we can be exporting, and with the 70 mining and manufacturing businesses in Nipissing riding, we really do see great potential,” he told CKAT.

See: Fedeli leading trade mission to India

In fact, Fedeli says he’ll sit down with some local companies when he’s back.

"There's huge opportunities here," explained Fedeli. "When you've got a country with 1.3 billion people, it's astonishing. I actually thought it was a typo on my briefing notes, we only do just over three billion in two-way trade with India, one of the largest countries in the world. It's a huge opportunity in machinery and goods and services we can be exporting, and with the 70 mining and manufacturing businesses in the Nipissing riding, we really do see a great potential.

“I look forward to debriefing a couple of the North Bay companies on some of the businesses that we visited,” he says.

The trade mission has already been a success on a couple of fronts.

He says a company in India announced they’re going to open a new facility in Kitchener-Waterloo with 250 to 300 engineering jobs.

“We’ve been engaged with this company for several months and just put the finishing touches on it on this trip,” Fedeli says.

A personal highlight was appearing on The Kapil Sharma Show.

"He's a late-night comedian with 40 million viewers, I did his show and talked about the Indo-Canadian community, how vibrant they are with 830,000 members residing in Ontario," Fedeli says.

"I had a really good opportunity to plug Ontario to a world-wide audience."

Fedeli returns to Canada on the weekend and will be back in the Legislature on Monday.