Interview with H.E. Mr Ivan Lancaric, Ambassador of Slovak Republic to India

How do you look at India-Slovakia relations?

I believe there is a great potential to upgrade our bilateral relationship from friendship to partnership. Traditionally, our relations are friendly and constructive. I very much hope that Honourable President of India Ram Nath Kovind will pay an official visit to Slovakia next year. We want to build a true partnership based on highest level political dialogue and deeper and broader cooperation in economic field where our countries have so much more to offer to each other.

I also want to believe that we will jointly achieve a progress in EU-India negotiations on BTIA. We believe that free trade agreement is of mutual interest, thanks to which we will significantly increase our bilateral trade, namely in automotive sector, which is the key interest of Slovakia as we are the biggest car producer in the world per capita. We can boast that next year our production capacity will grow even further to as many as 1,3 million vehicles. In this regard I am proud to mention the Jaguar Land Rover investment in Slovakia, which became the biggest JLR investment in continental Europe. We believe that it will be a catalyst of further investments by Indian companies with added value in Slovakia. Beside this investment there are also other companies with Indian capital operating in Slovakia.