PM delivers keynote address at India Ideas Summit
KRC TIMES Desk
Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivered the keynote address at the India Ideas Summit today. The Summit is being hosted by the US-India Business Council (USIBC). The theme for this year’s Summit is ‘Building a Better Future’.
Prime Minister congratulated USIBC on its 45th anniversary this year. He thanked the USIBC leadership for their commitment to advancing India-US economic partnership.
Global economic resilience through stronger domestic economic capacities
Prime Minister talked about the need to place the poor and the vulnerable at the core of the growth agenda. He underlined that ‘Ease of Living’ is as important as ‘Ease of Business’. He said that the pandemic has reminded us of the importance of resilience of the global economy against external shocks, which can be achieved by stronger domestic economic capacities. He emphasized that India is contributing towards a prosperous and resilient world through the clarion call of an ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat’.
India offers a perfect combination of openness, opportunities and options
Prime Minister said that there is global optimism towards India because it offers a perfect combination of openness, opportunities and options. He noted that in the last six years, efforts have been undertaken to make our economy more open and reform-oriented, adding that reforms have ensured competitiveness, enhanced transparency, expanded digitization, greater innovation and more policy stability.
Citing a recent report, Prime Minister said that there are more rural internet users than urban internet users. Hailing India as a land of opportunities, he said there are about half a billion active internet users in the country now, while there are over half a billion more people who are being connected. He also mentioned opportunities in the frontier technologies of 5G, Big Data Analytics, Quantum Computing, Block-chain and Internet of Things.
Extensive opportunities to invest across sectors
Prime Minister underlined that there are extensive opportunities to invest in a variety of sectors in India. He talked about the historic reforms recently undertaken in the agriculture sector and said that there are opportunities to invest in areas including agriculture inputs and machinery, agriculture supply chain, food processing sector, fisheries and organic produce. Noting that the healthcare sector in India is growing faster than 22% every year and the progress of Indian companies in the production of medical-technology, telemedicine and diagnostics, he said that now is the best time to expand investment in the Indian healthcare sector.
Prime Minister listed several other sectors which offer tremendous opportunities to invest, viz. the energy sector; infrastructure creation including building houses, roads, highways and ports; civil aviation, wherein top private Indian airlines plan to include over a thousand new aircraft over the coming decade, thus opening up the opportunity for any investor who chooses to set up manufacturing facilities in India, and also through setting up of Maintenance Repair and Operations facilities. He mentioned that India is raising the FDI cap for investment in the defence sector to 74%, two defence corridors have been established to encourage the prod
