Visiting Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has highlighted the improved economic and investment conditions in India.
Addressing leaders of US industry here on Monday, Jaitley alluded to the much stronger economic fundamentals that exist now in India, and mentioned that the monsoon prediction is improving, and with it, the prospects of the agriculture sector doing better.
He said this would put the economic growth prospects on an even better footing.
Jaitley also alluded to the fact that the manufacturing sector had started to do much better after a protracted period of slowdown.
Commenting on demand revival, he mentioned that micro attention was being paid to stalled projects and a pick up in that area would be helping demand for industrial products.
A benign inflation situation could further allow softening of interest rates, he said.
Also Read
Commenting on demand revival, Jaitley mentioned that micro attention was being paid to stalled projects and a pick up in that area would be helping demand for industrial products.
A benign inflation situation could further allow softening of interest rates, Jaitley said.
The event was a joint collaborative effort of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in partnership with US-India Business Council.
It was a high level luncheon meeting with top US multinationals with investments and operations in India.
Some of the companies around the table included Microsoft, Applied Materials, Amazon, Oracle, Hewitt Packard, Visa, Franklin Templeton, Google, Cisco, First Solar, Aemetis , Ebay, Qualcomm, Blackberry, San Disk among others.
Touching on some of the challenges, Mr Jaitley mentioned that the ease of doing business would need constant monitoring and improvement and eventually for growth to gain traction it was imperative that private sector investments picked up.
Dr Naushad Forbes, President Designate, CII emphasized" India and the US are natural partners owing to common principles of democracy and federalism. India is a noisy and vibrant democracy that has an innovative private sector as its growth engine. India today presents a strong long term growth story while aiming for inclusive and sustainable growth."
Hailing India as the shining star within the developing economies Mr Mukesh Aghi, President, USIBC stressed on the positivity surrounding the new Indian government's economic policy that has underlying social developmental agenda.
Rajiv Mehrishi, Finance Secretary, while answering specific questions from US companies stressed that the government is working to create an organized way to deal with change not just in policy regime but administration as well. Government efforts are " work in progress" though there is already significant progress on contentious issues like implementing a direct tax regime and GST regime, smoothening taxation disputes, easing land acquisition and labor regulations and so forth. All these incremental but important reforms would cumulatively help cultivate an environment for growth and development.
The CII-USIBC roundtable kicked off the first major interface for the Finance Minister during his visit to California which will also include several interactions with long term investors, institutional investors as well as members of the Indian diaspora in the Silicon Valley.