Prime Minister Narendra Modi today asked the industry to take risks and step up investments especially in job-creating sectors as his government looks to perk the economy by boosting spending and attracting global capital with improving ease of doing business.
A meeting of the industry and business leaders, bankers and economists called by the Prime Minister to discuss how to convert the global turmoil into an opportunity felt that its impact on India would be far less while India Inc favoured an interest rate cut to bringing down cost of funds.
In a nutshell, the participants at the three-hour long meeting analysed the recent global events, their impact on India and the opportunities in-built in the situation for India, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley told reporters after the interaction.
He said the participants, 27 of whom spoke, felt the global situation, especially the volatility in the capital and currency markets, is a transient phase and that steps should be taken to strengthen the real economy.
Prime Minister laid thrust on low cost manufacturing and felt the strength of economy lies in its huge human resource, size of domestic market and that it is not entire export dependent.
He also laid emphasis on small and medium enterprises sector and using MNERGA funds as a possible tool for skill development and using Mundra Bank for supporting unorganised sector, Jaitley said. Transparency in governance will lead to early decisions.
Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani, Tata Group head Cyrus P Mistry, Aditya Birla Group head Kumar Mangalam Birla, Sunil Bharti Mittal of Bharti Airtel and ITC chief Y C Deveshwar were among the industry leaders who attended the meeting.
RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan, ICICI Bank CEO Chanda Kochhar and SBI Chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya and economists like Subir Gokaran and Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian as well as Niti Aayog vice chairman Arvind Panagriya were also present.
