Pant, 3 union ministers for CII summit

K C Pant, the deputy chairman of Planning Commission, and union ministers Arun Shourie, Arun Jaitley and Yashwant Sinha will be attending the Partnership Summit -2004 to be held here from January 7 to 9.

The annual flagship event of the Confederation of the Indian Industry (CII) will have business delegations from US, UK, Canada, UAE, Oman, Qatar, Egypt, Malaysia, Singapore, Israel and South Africa, besides a few other countries.

The Government of Andhra Pradesh, which is the partner state for the summit, is likely to sign memoranda of understanding (MoUs) for a few but major investment projects during the summit.

"Unlike in the last two partnership summits, it is going to be a low key affair. We are not really looking this as a major event, in view of the experience we had on the memoranda of understanding signed during the last two partnership summits," a senior official of the state industries department said.

The partnership summit will have sessions on various issues such as India as global powerhouse: creating the mindset; Management lessons from the world's trouble spots, Unease against outsourcing : what India needs to do; Global credit ratings : do they really matter?; FDI : changing perceptions; Capital account convertability: matter of time?; Building Indian multinationals : from protection to domination; Leadership : breaking new grounds; and The Cancun standoff: who will blink first ? Over 300 delegates are expected to take part in the summit.