PM Modi urges business leaders to invest in India
Corporate tax cuts to further improve ease of doing business
NEWYORK: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday pitched India as a key investment and trade destination to the global business community, highlighting the country’s economic and political strengths and pledging personal intervention to address any gaps.
Delivering the keynote address at the morning plenary of the Bloomberg Global Business Forum, Modi ascribed India’s growth story to the “rarest of rare” combination of four key factors – democracy, demography, demand and decisiveness.
Modi said his government’s “big and tough decisions” to improve the business environment had resulted in the 1.3 billion people of India giving him a larger mandate in this year’s Lok Sabha elections. Referring to his government’s respect for the business world and creation of wealth, he listed its steps to spur investments, including the recent “revolutionary” cut in corporate tax and the scrapping of 50 outdated laws that were a hurdle to progress. Though he spoke largely in Hindi, Modi turned to English to drive home his point to the forum, being attended by more than 50 heads of state and 200 prominent business leaders.
“Your desires and our dreams match perfectly. Your technology and our talent can change the world, your scale and our skills can speed up global economic growth. Your prudent method and our pragmatic mind can write new stories in management,” he said.
“Your rational ways and our human values can show the path which the world is looking for. And if there is any gap anywhere, I will personally act as a bridge.”
Modi referred to his government’s ambition of making India a $5 trillion economy in five years and outlined plans to spend $1.3 trillion on physical and social infrastructure
“From this stage, I want to say this is just the start, there is a long way to go. This journey is a golden opportunity for the global business world to partner with India,” he said.
“Today, India is in a unique position where our rapid growth enables us to cater to diverse demand. Our people are rapidly defeating poverty, moving up the economic ladder with increasing purchasing power. Thus if you want to invest in a market where there is a scale, come to India,” he added.
India, Modi said, is the best investment destination for those looking to tap a market where the middle class is aspirational and has a global outlook, where the youth make large-scale use of the app economy for needs ranging from food to hyper-local delivery, where one of the largest infrastructure ecosystems is expanding at a fast pace, where cities are being modernised, and where the defence sector has been opened “like never before” through Make in India.
The Prime Minister also said India is unique for its decisiveness despite being a diverse and federal democracy, with a focus on seamless, inclusive and transparent systems. An unwieldy network of taxes had been replaced by the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime and the intellectual property rights and trademark regime had been made stronger. An insolvency and bankruptcy code had been introduced, and tax-related laws and tax on equity investments were being reformed to bring them at par with global regimes, he added.
Modi also noted India’s progress on several indices, including a 10-rank jump in the global logistics performance index, a 13-rank jump in the global competitive index and the 65-rank jump in the World Bank’s ease of doing business index.
During a question-and-answer session with Bloomberg LP founder Michael Bloomberg, Modi described climate change as one of the world’s biggest concerns and said India’s lifestyle was an example for the world. “We see the earth as our mother and we don’t have the right of exploitation ... We understand need, and there is no place for greed,” he said.