Chidambaram to sell India story in Canada, US next week

Finance Minister P Chidambaram will hold road shows in Canada and the US next week to sell India's growth story to attract investments and later attend the annual spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank in Washington.

With India faced with high Current Account Deficit (CAD), Chidambaram has been visiting major global financial hubs like Japan, Germany, Hong Kong and Singapore, to project the country as a investment destination.

The Finance Minister, during his India road shows beginning April 15, from Toronto and covering Ottawa and Boston and New York, is likely to talk about the recent steps taken by the government to speed up large projects and measures to bring down fiscal deficit during his meetings with leading investors and corporate entities.

The Minister is likely to spell out steps taken by the government to streamline FII investment in the debt market.

Sources said Chidambaram, accompanied by senior Finance Ministry officials and RBI Deputy Governor Urjit Patel, would also seek investments into various sectors, mainly infrastructure for which the government has pegged expenditure at nearly $1 trillion during the 12th Plan (2012-17).

After the road show, Chidambaram would participate in the three-day IMF and World Bank spring meeting beginning April 19 in Washington.

The Washington gathering includes the joint World Bank-IMF Development Committee and the IMF's International Monetary and Financial Committee meeting which discusses progress on the work of the two multi-lateral lending organisations.

The CAD, the between outflow and inflow of foreign exchange, soared to a record high of 6.7% in quarter ended December 2012. The numbers of the fourth quarter (January-March 2013) are yet to come out.

The FDI inflows had aggregated to $36.50 billion in 2011-12, as against $19.42 billion in 2010-11 and $25.83 billion in 2009-10.