Asserting that India's improved macro-economic and fiscal indicators were a good backdrop for investments, Prime Minister
Narendra Modi today asked
India Inc to increase its risk-taking appetite to step up investments.
On the other hand, industry leaders were asking the Modi government to cut down
interest rate and more policy action so that there is an ease of doing business.
After the PM met CEOs, bankers, economists and bureaucrats on the global economic slowdown, CII president Sumit Mazumder said, "Prime Minister has said that industry must take risk and increase investments...we must go out and invest. Industry has a role to play."
Mazumder further added, "We pointed out that though the government has done a lot to improve the ease of doing business, a lot more needs to be done."
Assocham president Rana Kapoor said that Prime Minister asked industry to "catalyse risk taking ability."
"The PM was emphatic that risk-related
entrepreneurship should not be subdued, but catalyzed. A lot of new investments could be made in soft infrastructure like affordable housing, hospitals as well as hard infrastructure like roads and highways," said Kapoor.
Mazumder said that Finance Minister
Arun Jaitley expressed hope that the Goods and
Services Tax (
GST) implementation will be rolled out soon. But there was no discussion about the land bill.
This brain storming session on 'Recent global events: Opportunities for India' was attended by
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.
Besides these industry leaders, Road Transport and Highway Minister
Nitin Gadkari, Power Minister Piyush Goyal, Oil Minister
Dharmendra Pradhan and RBI governor Raghuram Rajan also attended the meeting.
(Image: PIB)
