‘India-EU FTA will be a game-changer for Finland’

Mumbai: Finland Ambassador to India Kimmo Lahdevirta has expressed hope that the "soon-to-be-concluded" Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between India and the European Union will be a game-changer for his country's partnership with Maharashtra state, which accounts for nearly one-third of the total Finnish companies in the country.

Lahdevirta, who led a high-level delegation of Finnish companies on a strategic two-day visit to Mumbai on December 1-2, also said that the two sides share a long-standing and forward-looking partnership built on sustainability, innovation, and trust.

The visit was aimed at strengthening Finland's investment and trade partnership with India, leveraging the rapid progress in India-EU Free Trade Agreement (FTA) negotiations to open new and vital avenues for collaboration between Finnish expertise and India's development priorities, a statement said. "Finland and Maharashtra share a long-standing and forward-looking partnership built on sustainability, innovation, and trust. Our commitment here is tangible: we have about 100 Finnish companies actively doing business here in India, of which about 30 are headquartered in Maharashtra, and we quite recently established the Consulate General in Mumbai," Lahdevirta said.