India does not need foreign investment for growth : Lord Paul

Leading NRI industrialist Lord Swaraj Paul said India should stop craving for foreign investments for economic growth as the Indian economy has much more potential and it does not require outside help.

"It always pains me to see that there is a feeling in India that development can only take place with foreign investments. India is far more richer and it can contribute a lot to the world economy", said Lord Paul, who is here in connection with the India-UK round table meet as its co-chairman.

Elaborating his point, Lord Paul said the country has lot of potential in areas like software, manufacturing, fashion and even Bollywood films.

"The Indians and Indian products are making waves in these areas all across the world and you don't really have to depend on the foreign investments for economic progress", Lord Paul, who heads the London based Caparo Group said.

He said Britain is proud of its bilateral partnership with india specially in the areas of trade and business and during the just concluded round table meet one of the main agenda was how to further enhance this partnership.

"The India-UK bilateral trade has already touched the 5 billion pound mark with UK emerging as India's third largest trading partner after US and Belgium and we have set a target of 10 billion pound by 2007."

He said that the one of the recent phenomena was that more and more Indian companies are investing in UK and at the last count there were 465 Indian companies investing in UK economy, a fact which the round table felt should be given greater publicity.