By Aditya Raj Das
NEW DELHI: At a juncture when the Indian economy is facing the challenge of protecting itself from the spin-off effects of Chinese slowdown Prime Minister Narendra Modi today asked the industry to take risks and step up investments especially in job-creating sectors as his government looks to perk the economy by boosting spending and attracting global capital with improving ease of doing business.
However, nothing concrete emerged out of the three-hour long meeting in terms of any announcements having any bearings on the economy.
A meeting of the industry and business leaders, bankers and economists called by the Prime Minister to discuss how to convert the global turmoil into an opportunity felt that its impact on India would be far less while India Inc favoured an interest rate cut to bringing down cost of funds.
The participants at the three-hour long meeting analysed the recent global events, their impact on India and the opportunities in-built in the situation for India, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley told newspersons after the interaction.
He said the participants, 27 of whom spoke, felt the global situation, especially the volatility in the capital and currency markets, is a transient phase and that steps should be taken to strengthen the real economy.
In his speech Prime Minister laid thrust on low cost manufacturing and felt the strength of economy lies in its huge human resource, size of domestic market and that it is not entire export dependent.
He also laid emphasis on small and medium enterprises sector and using MNERGA funds as a possible tool for skill development and using Mundra Bank for supporting unorganised sector, Jaitley said adding “transparency in governance will lead to early decisions.”
Jaitley said that most participants in the India Inc meeting felt we are going through a phase of volatility which might turn to some turmoil on the market”.
“India will be among lesser impacted economies because of the global economic turmoil,” said Arun Jaitley. He said that India’s economic fundamentals are reasonably strong.
Jaitley said that the industry leaders suggested that focus on agricultural productivity must be increased. The Prime Minister has laid thrust on low cost manufacturing emphasis and on job creating sectors such as MSMEs, the minister said.
He said that many participants wanted monetary policy easing by the Reserve Bank of India. “There are some sectors where the government needs to tie up loose ends,” Jaitley said.
The Finance Minister also said that several suggestions were made about destressing steel, textile sectors in the meeting with industry leaders earlier today.
“Prime Minister has said that industry must take risk and increase investments…we must go out and invest. Industry has a role to play,” CII president Sumit Mazumder told newspersons after the interactive meeting with the Prime Minister.
Several industry leaders meanwhile pitched for interest rate cut saying it would help them take risks and scale up investments.
“Prime Minister said this is an opportunity for us to take advantage and invest…cost of capital is too high but I don’t know how many people can go ahead to take risk and invest. Many of us raised the issue of interest rate,” FICCI President Jyotsna Suri said.
ASSOCHAM President Rana Kapoor said that Prime Minister asked industry to “catalyse risk taking ability”.
He said the issue of capital requirement of banks to meet economic growth and the need to bifurcate bad assets of the banking system came up for discussion.
As far as the Goods and Services Tax (GST) implementation is concerned, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley expressed hope that it would by rolled out, Mazumder said, adding the land bill did not come up for discussion.
The industry leaders who attended the brain storming session with Modi on ‘Recent global events: Opportunities for India’ were Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani, Tata Group head Cyrus P Mistry, Aditya Birla Group head Kumar Mangalam Birla, Sunil Bharti Mittal of Bharti Airtel and ITC chief Y C Deveshwar.
Reserve Bank Governor Raghuram Rajan as well as Road Transport and Highway Minister Nitin Gadkari, Power Minister Piyush Goyal and Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan were also present.