PM discusses global economic slowdown with industry, experts

New Delhi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi today met top CEOs, bankers, economists and ministers to discuss ways to bolster the economy amid global slowdown.

The meeting, with the agenda ‘Recent Global Events: Opportunities for India’, was held at a time when global markets are in turmoil caused by a slowing Chinese economy, devaluation of the yuan and concerns surrounding the prospect of a US rate hike.

Modi asked industry to take risks and make investments, CII president Sumit Mazumder said after the meeting.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Reserve Bank Governor Raghuram Rajan as well as Road Transport and Highway Minister Nitin Gadkari, Power Minister Piyush Goyal and Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan joined the brainstorming at Prime Minister’s official residence here.

“A wide-ranging discussion is expected on the impact of recent economic events, and how best India can take advantage of them,” an official statement had said about the meeting yesterday.

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.

State-owned gas utility GAIL India Chairman B C Tripathi and BHEL chief B Prasad Rao too were present at the meeting which was also attended by ICICI Bank CEO Chanda Kochhar and SBI Chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya.

Ajit Ranade, Chief Economist, Aditya Birla Group, Jahangir Aziz, Chief Economic, JP Morgan and Subir Gokaran of Brookings Institute were among the economists/experts present at the meeting.

Others who attended the meeting included industry chambers’ heads — Sumit Mazumder of CII, Jyotsna Suri of FICCI and Rana Kapoor of Assocham.

Government officials present the meeting included Finance Secretary Ratan P Watal, Commerce Secretary Rita Teaotia, Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das and Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian as well as Niti Aayog vice chairman Arvind Panagriya.

PM asks industry to take risk, invest;India Inc wants rate cut

Prime Minister Narendra Modi today asked India Inc to increase risk-taking appetite and step up investments even as industry leaders pressed for interest rate cut and more policy action to improve ease of doing business.

“Prime Minister has said that industry must take risk and increase investments…we must go out and invest. Industry has a role to play,” CII president Sumit Mazumder told reporters after the meeting of Prime Minister with CEOs, bankers, economists and bureaucrats on the global economic slowdown.

Several industry leaders meanwhile pitched for interest rate cut saying it would help them take risks and scale up investments.

“Prime Minister said this is an opportunity for us to take advantage and invest…cost of capital is too high but I don’t know how many people can go ahead to take risk and invest…

many of us raised the issue of interest rate,” Ficci president Jyotsna Suri said.

Assocham president Rana Kapoor said that Prime Minister asked industry to “catalyse risk taking ability”.

He said the issue of capital requirement of banks to meet economic growth and the need to bifurcate bad assets of the banking system came up for discussion.

As far as the Goods and Services Tax (GST) implementation is concerned, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley expressed hope that it would by rolled out, Mazumder said, adding the land bill did not come up for discussion.

The industry leaders who attended the brain storming session with Modi on ‘Recent global events: Opportunities for India’ were 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.

Reserve Bank Governor Raghuram Rajan as well as Road Transport and Highway Minister Nitin Gadkari, Power Minister Piyush Goyal and Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan were also present. .

PTI