"India's growing and stable investment climate present immense opportunities for Australian companies, particularly in energy and infrastructure sector," Pawan Kumar Bansal, minister of state for finance said while addressing the Australia-India business council investors' meeting in Sydney.

An official release quoting him here said India offered a huge market and enormous business potential with a growing middle class in the country. It had also the potential to become trade and business center of South Asia and East Asia with its proposed regional trade agreements with several countries and trade blocks in the near future.

Bansal said that trade between the two countries has been continuously expanding.

Bansal said that Indian investments in Australia are now well over $ 1 billion (US), mostly in IT sector. On the other hand, Australia ranks 10th and accounts for only about 2.37 per cent of total FDI approvals with $ 1.92 billion (US).

To further widen and diversity the investor base, the limit of FII investment in corporate debt in India has been increased from $ 1.5 billion (US) to $ 2 billion (US) in April 2006.