Austrade canvasses global opportunities

Austrade’s newly appointed national manager of financial services, Gary Johnston, intends to ramp up Australia’s export of financial services, focusing on the Asia-Pacific region, but also expanding into the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) economies.

Johnston, who replaces Peter Osborne in the role, said while he would maintain Austrade’s strong focus on inward investment, the Government had made a commitment to promoting financial services exports.

“In terms of both inward investment and export, we are very interested in China and economies like Taiwan, Korea and also there are opportunities emerging in Malaysia, Vietnam and of course Japan, which is a very large and important market,” he said.

“We are conscious also of the BRIC countries and this is an area we would like to explore further.”

He said he would be picking up from the progress already made under Osborne’s guidance, which includes a global audit of potential opportunities.

“In terms of inward investment we have a strong pipeline from both North America and Europe, but we are starting to see increasing interest coming from China and other counties in our region, such as India, Taiwan and Malaysia,” he said.

“We are also seeing some interest coming from the Middle East.”

In a presentation Austrade gave at a recent BRIC+ Program lunch hosted by PortfolioConstruction Forum, Think Global Consulting and in association with DST International, Osborne said Austrade also wanted to partner with the local industry as well as assist with the establishment of free trade agreements with countries like China.