‘70% of Belgium’s trade with India used to be diamonds’

Coimbatore: Seventy percent of Belgium’s trade with India used to consist of diamonds, said Didier Vanderhasselt, the Ambassador of Belgium to India, in the city on Monday.
After inaugurating the Colruyt Group IT Global Capability Centre (GCC) office in the city, he remarked, “We have very good relations with India. We were one of the first countries to recognize India after the Independence, and it’s something still acknowledged by the authorities and something we are, of course, proud of.”
“When it comes to our bilateral relations on the economic side, in 2022 we were the second largest European Union trade partner of India after Germany.We had accumulated 15 billion euros in trade, both in export and import,” he said.
“Seventy percent of our trade with India used to consist of diamonds. We are also the 15th largest investor in India. The figure for trade in goods was 15 billion euros in 2022, although it went down a little bit in 2023,” Didier Vanderhasselt said.
“When we are talking about trade in services, the numbers are smaller. However, Belgium’s export to India was half a billion euros, while India’s export to Belgium was 750 million euros,” he added.