Prime Minister Narendra Modi after a brainstorming session with India Inc on how India can manage global economic turbulence, including opportunities for Asia's third-largest economy in China's market and growth woes, has asked the Indian industry to take risk and invest more as his government promised a broad range of steps including stepping up of investment in infrastructure and improving ease of doing business to attract global investment.
PM referred to the global economic situation and urged the captains of industry to take risks saying that 'Since you regard this as a great opportunity for India, it is for India's private sector also now to increase their own investments. He also said that 'Conventionally, compared to others, the private sector has greater risk taking ability because their entrepreneurship emanates out of risk taking.”
Industry leaders on their part cited high interest rates as a deterrent to fresh investments. Industry body Assocham told the PM that policymakers needed to act fast and called for a deep cut in interest rates and new duties to stop dumping of Chinese products, such as steel. CII too said that though the government has done a lot to improve the ease of doing business, a lot more needs to be done. The prime minister and FM virtually advised secretaries and officials to work towards improvements in the areas of concern flagged by each industrialist.
The meeting was held against the backdrop of falling markets and a creeping mood of pessimism among businesses and was attended by industry honchos like Reliance Industries' Chairman and Managing Director Mukesh Ambani, Tata group chief Cyrus Mistry, Aditya Birla Group head Kumar Mangalam Birla, Wipro boss Azim Premji. From government side apart from the PM and FM, various other ministers too attended the meeting along with eight economists and four top financiers including SBI chief Arundhati Bhattacharya, ICICI Bank's Chanda Kochhar, IDFC's Rajiv Lall and CEO of the recently launched Bandhan Bank Chandra Shekhar Ghosh.
