Banca Popolare di Verona-Banco S Germiniano ES Prospero (BPV) has opened its representative office in Mumbai. BPV is the eleventh biggest banking group in Italy.
BPV's head of international division Gianfranco Gaffarelli, said: "Considering the way the Indo-Italian business has been growing, we felt it was necessary to have our operations here. The bank is one of the major bankers to the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Italy apart from some of the other major companies."
Italian trade commissioner C Zani said: "Indo-Italian trade is currently at around $2 billion yearly. India exports textiles, leather, agriculture products etc to Italy. Around 7,000 Italian companies have dealing with Indian firms, of which a majority are SMEs."
"The next logical step of the bank would be opening another representative office in Delhi. However, we realise that if we have to do business in India we would need to have a network of branches in India. We are fairly sure that there is a lot of business opportunities in India," said Gaffarelli. He, however, added that the plan of opening full-fledged branch operations in India is a long-term business plan depending on the emerging situation.
The bank is targeting the letter of credit business originating from India and also the guarantees which the subsidiaries of Italian companies would need in India said BPV's India representative Ashish Gupta.
The bank had started its operations some months back. "At the moment we have been able to tap around 7 per cent of the Indo-Italian business. In the next six months we would like to increase this to at least eight per cent and subsequently 15 per cent in the next two years," Gaffarelli said.
