Klaus Zimmermann CommonAge CEO and founding Director was recently invited by the Australian Federal Government to accompany the Federal Trade Minister on a trade mission to India.
Visits took place in New Delhi, Mumbai and Pune.
Here are his thoughts on the visit:
Notwithstanding an Australian-Indian free trade agreement on the horizon, the outlook for Australian aged care providers considering setting up in India have been described as ‘high volume, low margin’.
With the Indian and Australian governments committed to developing a free trade agreement this year, major aged care operators are eyeing the possible opportunities arising from greater access to the country of 1.3 billion people and its growing middle class.
When China signed its free trade agreement with Australia last November, experts here predicted that the export of Australian aged care knowledge and services to that country would increase.
However, while China has official plans to dramatically boost the development of its aged care industry (government targets to double the number of aged care beds to eight million by 2020), India has virtually no aged care infrastructure and little government support to develop the sector, according to an industry figure who recently visited the country as part of a Federal Government trade delegation.
Klaus Zimmerman, former aged care executive and CEO of CommonAge, the body established to promote best practice in aged care across Commonwealth countries, said there were opportunities for Australian aged services in India, but they were largely related to training in specific areas of demand such as dementia and palliative care.
“If you’re going over there to make money in aged care, you’re not going to, in the short-term; the country is not set up for it,” he told
Read the full article here in the Australian publication, Australia Ageing Agenda.