– Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Sept 4: India is being transformed from just a passive market to an active manufacturing hub at the heart of global value chains which has made the country a leading global attraction for foreign investments, the prime minister Narendra Modi said.
Delivering the special key note address at the United States – India 2020 Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF) through video conferencing on Friday, Modi said it was with the mission to make India to act as global force multiplier that the call for an “Atmanirbhar Bharat,” (Self-Reliant India) had been given facilitating 1.3 billion Indians to merge the local with global.
Referring to a series of tax concessions and other administrative reforms being undertaken by his government, Modi said the road further ahead was full of opportunities especially in Private and Public sectors and referred to the opening up of sectors such as Coal, Mining, Railways, Defence, Space, and Atomic Energy.
He also referred to Production Linked Incentive schemes launched for- mobile & electronics, medical devices, pharma sectors along with reforms in Agriculture and told the summit that for the challenges in India there was a Government that believed in delivering results, “a government for which ease of living is as important as ease of doing business.”
The USISPF is a non-profit organization that works for the partnership between India and the U.S. The Theme of the five-day Summit that began on the August 31 was “US-India Navigating New Challenges.”
The prime minister said the global pandemic had impacted everyone and was testing every country’s resilience, public health and economic systems. “The current situation demands a fresh mind set, a mindset where the approach to development is human centric, where there is a spirit of cooperation between everyone,” he said.
Referring to various steps taken to ramp up facilities for fighting COVID and to increase awareness amongst the citizens, Modi said all such early measures ensured that the country with such a big population and limited resources had one of the lowest death rates per million in the World.
He expressed happiness that India’s business community, especially the small business had been proactive. “Starting from almost nothing, they made us the second largest PPE kits manufacturer in the World,” he pointed out.
Referring to various reforms the Prime Minister said the pandemic failed to impact the aspirations and ambitions of the people of India because of the support the government gave in recent time through reforms which had made business easier and red-tapism lesser.
Listing the government’s performances, he said work was actively underway on the world’s largest housing program and that the renewable energy infrastructure was being expanded.
Prime Minister also referred to the boosting of the Rail, road and air connectivity and said India was creating a unique digital model to build a national digital health mission. “We are using the best of fin-tech to provide banking, credit, digital payments and insurance to millions. All these initiatives are being taken using world-class technology and global best practices,” he said.
Modi said the pandemic had shown to the world that decision on developing global supply chains should be based not only on costs but also on trust. “Along with affordability of geography, companies are now also looking for reliability and policy stability. India is the location which has all of these qualities,” he stressed and added “Owing to these, India is becoming one of the favourable destinations for Foreign Investment.”
He said be it America, the Europe, Australia or the Gulf the world believes in India. “We have received over 20 billion dollars of foreign investment flows during this year. Google, Amazon and Mubadala Investments have announced long-term plans for India.” He claimed that the FDI into India rose by 20 percent in 2019 despite the pandemic when the global FDI inflows fell by 1 Percent and said “this shows the success of our FDI regime.”
Prime Minister referred to the transparent and predictable India offers and how the system encourages and supports honest tax payers. He said India’s GST was unified fully enabled indirect tax system. He referred to the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code which reduces risk for the entire financial system and also dwelt on the Comprehensive Labour Reforms that reduce compliance burden for employers and how it provide social security protection to the workers.
Prime Minister discussed the importance of investment in driving growth and how India was tackling both demand and supply side of it. “This is being done by making India one of the lowest tax destinations in the world and with further incentive for new manufacturing units,” he added.
Prime Minister referred to the mandatory e- platform based ‘faceless assessment’ and said it would go a long way in helping citizens along with the Tax-payers charter. The continued regulatory reforms in bond markets ensure improved ease of access for investors, he said.