Industry to thrash out issues with PM today

Main issues to be flagged include fall in rupee, plummeting investments and a lackluster manufacturing policy

Captains of Indian industry are finally going to thrash out some of the major issues that are hampering their growth and of the economy at large with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today. Some of the main issues that are going to be flagged by them are the fall in rupee, plummeting investments and a lackluster manufacturing policy that has failed to attract any investment so far.

Those who will be queuing up at the PM’s residence on the Race Course Road tomorrow are NR Narayana Murhty, Adi Godrej, Chanda Kochhar, Sunil Bharti Mittal, Deepak Parekh, Rahul Bajaj, Kris Gopalakrishnan and Naina Lal Kidwai among others.  

The tempestuous meeting is expected to also take up the recent efforts made by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to halt the fall in rupee, which depreciated by almost 10% between May to July.

India Inc is facing severe problems owing to a fall in the rupee coupled with a widening current account deficit (CAD), which reached $87.8 billion or 4.8% of GDP in 2012-13 against $78.2 billion or 4.2% of GDP in the previous year.

Last week, while delivering a speech on the company’s annual general meeting, ITC’s YC Deveshwar highlighted some of the major challenges facing the industry and economy today. He underscored the need to “contain and find a longer-term solution to deal with inflation, the fiscal deficit and the current account deficit.”