Will prepare blueprint for companies looking beyond China: Sitharaman

FM hopes to welcome such companies to India

WASHINGTON DC: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said she will prepare a blueprint for international companies that are

looking beyond China to make India as their preferred investment destination.

She said industry leaders who are contemplating getting their businesses out of China are “definitely considering India as the pitch”.

Therefore, she said, it might be important for the government to now see and meet up with a

lot of industry leaders and invite them to India. “I’d certainly be doing that I go back and design in some way whereby I will identify those multinational corporations, all American businesses or any other country European or a British origin who are moving out of China or who probably are even contemplating,” she said.

“I will make a blueprint with which I will approach them and put forward to them as to why India is a far more preferable destination,” Sitharaman told a group of Indian reporters on Saturday at the conclusion of her interactions at the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank here.

That could also be in specific areas in which India has common capacity ecosystem building, whether it’s electronics, lithium-ion battery or any other semiconductors, she added.

However, Sitharaman said the government’s decision is not just going to be purely on the basis of what is happening presently between the United States and China.