FM: NO BETTER PLACE TO INVEST

Investors can find no better place than India that has a “democracy loving” and “capitalist respecting environment”, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said. ››P21

NEW DELHI: Day after pledging more reforms to boost growth, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday said the government plans to take sector-specific measures to revive stressed sectors.

“Government has announced specific measures to deal with the slowdown being faced by automobile sector and similar initiatives are being done and will continue to be taken for each of the stressed sectors. The positive intervention from government has to be a continuous process till the current slowdown comes to a halt,” Sitharaman told an event jointly organised by the Us-india Strategic Partnership Forum, Ficci and Citibank.

Industry lobby Ficci put out a series of tweets from Sitharaman’s roundtable with institutional investors in Washington. Other sectors represented at the event included insurance, banks, private equity and debt restructuring companies.

So far the finance minister has announced packages for automobiles, infrastructure, exports and the real estate sectors.

Sitharaman, who is currently in the US for the spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund, said the government is fully committed to introducing deep reforms.

“The fact that government is engaging with various stakeholders and taking several reform measures is strong signal of trust building,” she added.

The Union finance minister said investors can find no better place than India.

“It is one of the fastest growing (economies) even today ... So you will not have anything better... democracy-loving, capitalist-respecting environment ... in India,” Sitharaman was quoted as saying by PTI.

PTI contributed to this story.