Spain's Caixa Bank opens representative office in India

Spanish retail lender Caixa Bank today opened a representative office here to provide financial support to its Spanish clients' business operations in India.

"Trade between India and Spain is growing by 15% annually and we plan to help our clients from back home acquire projects here, mainly in the energy and infrastructure sector and industrial equipment," Caixa Bank Head (International Division) Ignacia Alvarez Rendueles told reporters here.

"We are going to provide them with guarantee when they bid for these projects," he said.

Caixa is going to be proactive and inform its clients about some upcoming viable projects for them in India as well, Peter Hansen, the bank's chief representative in India, said.

The lender did not disclose the revenue it plans to raise through the representative office.

"As far as revenues are concerned, we gauge it in terms of increasing our market share of trade transactions. We plan to increase it (market share of trade transactions) to 15% from the current 10% in the next couple of years," Rendueles said.

According to Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) data, Spain has surpassed countries like South Korea in terms of trade with India in the past decade and is the country's 13th largest trade partner, he added.

Caixa Bank, one of the 10 largest banks in the Eurozone, is a part of the Caixa Group, which has interests in the banking business, insurance operations and investments in international banks and leading service companies such as Repsol and Telefonica.