Bolly billions bid

Trade push for Indian blockbusters

QUEENSLAND will try to lure Bollywood blockbusters to film here as part of a push to boost trade with India by $1.5 billion over the next five years.

The Palaszczuk Government will today launch a strategy to strengthen ties with the world’s fastestgrowing economy.

“India is Queensland’s third-largest merchandise export market. That’s why it’s crucial we have a tailored trade and investment strategy to build our successes in this market,” said Innovation and Tourism Development Minister Kate Jones, who is on a trade mission to the subcontinent this week.

Queensland sold more than $9.8 billion of goods to India in 2017, with coal accounting for two-thirds of exports.

“New data released today shows with this strategy, we can expect to boost exports to India by 15 per cent over the next five years – that’s a $1.5 billion injection to the state’s economy,” Ms Jones said.

Tourism is one of five sectors identified with strong growth potential and the blueprint says attracting Bollywood productions to the Gold Coast could be a key factor in bringing visitors.

“Bollywood prefers shooting films abroad due to government approvals, public interference and security issues for celebrities compared to shooting in India. Last year Bollywood shot in 60 countries, but not Australia,” the strategy document says.

“Bollywood’s international shoot locations are one of the key influencers of Indian tourists’ destination choices.”

Indian travellers are among the world’s highest spending, splashing out four times more than Japanese or Chinese tourists.

Queensland does not yet have any direct flights to Indian cities and, while the 76,000 visitors to the state last year was up 33 per cent, Sydney and Melbourne attracted four times more.

India is already the second-biggest source of inter- national students in Queensland with 11,700 enrolments last year. However, the potential growth is enormous with the country set to have the world’s largest millennial population by 2020.

The strategy says Queensland can also partner to deliver education and training in India, where there is a target of training 400 million people by 2022.

In addition to exporting coal, Queensland’s worldleading mining equipment, technology and services sector can help India develop its own resources industry.