South Africa has a huge advantage as an investment destination, although the nationalisation debate is off-putting, India's High Commissioner Virendra Gupta said today.
"At the moment South Africa has a huge relative advantage... but the nationalisation debate does detract investors," he said on the sidelines of a seminar in Johannesburg on Indian-South African business relations.
Gupta said he was "not nervous at all" about nationalisation becoming policy and saw the current debate as merely rhetorical.
"I'm advising Indian businesses to come. Various government functionaries have gone out of their way to reassure nationalisation is not government policy."
However, he did point out that opportunities in the rest of Africa were continuing to improve. The biggest opportunity in South Africa was the size of the market, Gupta said.
At the moment, total investment between South Africa and India was around US7 billion to US8 billion, although the majority of this flowed into South Africa from India.
Gupta said in five or six years this would be more evenly balanced, at an estimated total investment between the two countries of around US15 billion.
The seminar was organised by Business Unity SA and the Confederation of Indian Industry.
Just R20 for the first month. Support independent journalism by subscribing to our digital news package. 
