My colleagues from the Hellenic Republic, Estonia, and Latvia,
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Let me say what a great pleasure it is today to join you at this conference. I have just returned from Munich yesterday, from the Munich Security Conference, so I think I carry as much flavor of Europe as my colleagues from there do, and certainly the presence today of the three Foreign Ministers on the podium, and many others who are arriving as we speak for the Raisina Dialogue, does say a lot about the deepening Indian relationship with Europe. But sometimes numbers are useful as an illustration, and I tried to quantify how I could convince you that Europe is truly a priority today. And one way of doing that was to remind you that the Prime Minister of India during his tenure has been 27 times to Europe, that he's received 37 European Heads of Governments and States, that I have visited Europe 29 times in my relatively shorter tenure as a Minister, and I have received 36 of my colleagues during this period. So I underline these numbers really to emphasize today how deep and how sustained and how continuous the relationship has been. But it is not just a relationship with a continent or even a union. We also have made an effort to engage European countries in smaller groupings, and the presence of my colleagues from the Baltics is a reminder that we will be holding a Nordic-Baltic meeting in the coming days. And I hope, as I discussed with my colleague with Greece, that perhaps one day soon we would hold a similar gathering with countries of the Mediterranean.
Now if I could really, as Indians and Europeans gather in this room and others who wish us well, address myself to what is it that drives the world economy, because that is really why we have assembled here today. And all of you would agree that there are six broad elements of that. One of course is the production and consumption. The second is connectivity and logistics. The third is technology. The fourth, increasingly realized today, is of demographics. The fifth is of values and comforts, because countries and societies who bond with each other more closely obviously find it much more easy to do business as well. And finally, to the extent we create an architecture, a framework, it is much easier for us to do business and promote economic partnerships. So today, some of the thoughts I present before you are from those perspectives of business, of sustainability, of creating partnerships. And let me start with production and consumption. I think we were reminded by the earlier speakers about the importance of concluding a free trade agreement with the European Union, as also with EFTA, not just a free trade agreement with the EU, but also one relating to geographical indicators and to investment protection. And these agreements, these negotiations resumed after an eight-year gap between 2013 to resume in 2021.
Now why is this important? It is important because you can already see that our trade levels have been growing steadily. But there is a well-founded realization that we need really a more positive framework for that to accelerate. Last year, 2022, our trade was about, I think, 120 billion euros in terms of goods, and our services trade actually has been growing very robustly at about 30 percent. But part of the reason why we need a much smoother interface between our economies is that it's important for the European Union to prepare for the India that is to come. And what is that India which is to come? Today India has a GDP of about 3.7 something, 3.73 is 3.75 trillion dollars. That GDP by the end of the decade would be 7.3. By the time we are into our 100th year of independence is estimated at 30 trillion. And according to Goldman Sachs, by 2075, we would be at 52.5 trillion. So that's an arithmetical way of saying that India is going to be an increasingly significant economy, the second largest by 2075, but certainly the third largest by the end of this decade in national terms. And that is something which the European Union has to take into account.
Now the size of the economy is one. You can also see it in terms of growth. If one looks at India's trade in the last decade from below about 570 billion dollars, it has grown to almost double that amount to 1.18 trillion dollars in 2022. And the growth in trade is only likely to increase, the pace of it is only likely to increase in the coming years. Now I mentioned those two, but there is a larger shift which is occurring in India, larger transformation, and that is reflected in making it easier to do business, in making it easier for living, in the infrastructure changes which are captured by our Gati Shakti initiative, in the digital changes which are driven by the digital delivery programs we have, and not least by the enormous talent pool whose quality and size is growing by the day.
Now those were thoughts about production and consumption, why it is necessary today for the European Union to focus more on India, and vice versa. Let me say a few words about connectivity as well, because my colleague from Greece touched on it. He spoke rightly about the IMEC corridor, the India Middle East Europe Economic Corridor, and when this agreement, this understanding and principle was reached last September on the sidelines of the G20, perhaps all of us were not adequately cognizant of the fragility of existing connectivity. Recent events on the Red Sea, in the Gulf of Aden, have reminded us of that. And it isn't just recent events, if we go back we saw what happened when the Suez Canal was blocked by a mishap for some time. So the need today to create multiple corridors of connectivity, supporting corridors of connectivity, different forms with their own inbuilt resilience is something which is vital, and it is vital because at either end of this you actually have two big production and consumption centers, Europe and India.
Now the IMEC is not the only corridor, there are others, there is a longer one which is being worked through Iran. But I also want to mention some other potential connectivity channels which would be of long-term interest to India and Europe. One of them is actually the polar route, so climate change I should remind our Latvian colleagues sometimes can have some inadvertent benefits as well. So there is today a serious assumption that the polar route could actually open up a different logistical pathway between India and Europe which will go through the Indo-Pacific.
I must also share with our European friends that within South Asia, in this region, South Asia and beyond, there are again very big connectivity projects already under execution and still bolder thoughts in the making. Between India and its immediate neighbors, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, we have seen actually in terms of roads, grid connections, waterways, a very big change which has come about. There is a much more arduous project, the trilateral highway, and in fact if the IMEC connects India to Europe through the west and the trilateral highway when it is done, and we have challenges in Myanmar there, but when the trilateral highway is done, it would go all the way to the Vietnamese coast. So you actually will have a lateral connectivity grid which would connect Europe all the way to the Pacific, mostly by land. So this is surely a thought for your consideration. Now on connectivity, I think we would particularly value working with Europe because it is important today that connectivity is collaborative, it is transparent, it is based on viable projects, it doesn't have hidden agendas, and by doing that, we will set before the world a model of how international cooperation on connectivity should work, and we hope that other countries will draw appropriate lessons from that model.
Now, the other factor I mentioned was technology, and surely in a digital age, I think we all appreciate the importance of trust and transparency. This is the age of AI, it is the age of electric vehicles, it is of critical challenging technologies, of space, and really of smart cities and smart technologies. And we see this really reflected in our daily lives, in the economic developments that surround us, and certainly in a lot of what we are doing, we believe today that there are opportunities for European companies. The smart cities and smart grids have already demonstrated that, but the decarbonization efforts which India is making, even this massive campaign which the Prime Minister announced for solar rooftops, a lot of these today hold possibilities for new areas of cooperation between us. But there are areas where we cannot be impervious to its security implications. We talk often of renewables, but perhaps we do not adequately focus on what the reliability of those renewables are. Similarly, we are in a digital age. Today, the entire semiconductor environment, the phrase chips war, is itself an assertion of the geopolitics which surrounds technology. So it is natural today as key partners that we have a Trade and Technology Council. The EU has it only with the United States and India. We recognize the significance of that choice. And I met Vice President Vestager in Munich, and certainly it is our intention to hold the next meeting of the TTC this year, hopefully sooner rather than later.
A few words about demographics. I think today the skills and talent issue is something which is faced by businesses across the world. And a lot of what businesses try to do is to plug those gaps and ensure that they have the access which is necessary for their continued growth. Now, we have in the last few years concluded a number of agreements on mobility with our European partners. And the plus point of these agreements are that, one, they promote legal movement, and, two, they promote movement of certain skill sets. So it is something which fits in very neatly with the consumer requirement at the other end as well. And here I just want to share with people in business...I would say, almost the explosion which you see in India's talent capabilities, that if one looks just at the last decade, in the last decade, 7,000 new colleges have opened in India, which means two new colleges per day in the last decade. There have been 400 new universities, eight new institutes of technology, eight new institutes of management, 13 new institutes of medical sciences, what we call the All India Medical Sciences, 16 new institutes of information technology, and 74 institutions of national importance. So I just throw those numbers at you because I want you to grasp today the transformation not just in our infrastructure, not just in our governance, but also in the human resources of this country and the way we are heading into the digital age, into the knowledge economy. It is that human resource which will actually be the real connect between us. Which brings me, of course, to the importance of values. I think, again, part of the tailwind we have in developing our business is the extent of trust that, as pluralistic societies, as market economies, I think we know intuitively there are things we do, there are things we don't do. And the systems, I think, engender a great way of comfort which will certainly be helpful to the partnership. And finally, as I said, we need a framework. Today, the world after COVID is looking at a new form of globalization, a form of globalization where we are more secure in our own countries and regions, where there is greater resilience and reliability in supply chains, where there is greater trust and transparency in the digital world. In a sense, I would say the economic description of that very multi-polarity which my colleague from Greece referred to.
So, once again, let me thank you all today for the opportunity to speak to you. And I would like to end in a way with a comment on something which my Estonian colleague said. He said that, you know, democracies work and that's why we change governments. Believe me, in this country we know when democracy really works, we re-elect governments. So, I want to promise our European colleagues that there will be stability and there will be continuity, there will be more vision, there will be more change, there will be greater reform and there will be certainly more business.
Thank you once again.