Encouraged by the economy growing at 9%, Finance Minister P Chidambaram today said it would not be wrong now to compare the country with China even though "there's a lot we can learn from them, especially execution of projects in time.""India has often been compared with China...I invite comparison with China. There is enough room in the world for both China and India to grow," he said at an international conference on meeting India's infrastructure needs with public-private partnerships."China and India in many ways complement each other but in many areas we compete with each other," Chidambaram said.The country's savings and investment rate as percentage of GDP have gone up by 2% each. But to sustain the revised growth rate of 9% in 11th Plan, he said: "Both savings and investment as proportion of GDP must be raised further." There is much to be learnt from China. "But we are proud of our political system, we believe that we can learn from China about execution of projects within time, strict discipline and reward-punishment system for those who are incharge of the project execution," he said."We do not envy China, we wish to emulate China in the matter of infrastrucutre," he added.Chidambaram expressed confidence that India would receive more investsments after upgrading of sovereign rating to investment grade and seize the opportunity.
