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The Union Minister of Finance Shri P. Chidambaram has said that the globalization must bring benefits to all Indians. The Minister was addressing the plenary session “India: A hub for globalization” at 3rd Pravasi Bharatiya Divas organized jointly by Union Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs and FICCI in Mumbai today. The Minister said globalization means reaping the advantages of global Market and seize the opportunity to abolish poverty and provide a decent life of dignity to all Indians. He further said globalization must invariably result in rising cheaper capital to finance projects and programmes and it should provide access to Best technology and practices above all it should create Market for global manufacturing. He said the service sector was able to reap the benefits however unfortunately the agriculture sector was denied the benefits of globalization which means about 65% of Indian populace is denied the benefits, because the developed countries are not opening their markets.
Noting on the other aspects of globalization the Minister said India is already a global hub for many sectors including software, Business processes, Health and Financial sectors. He said Many MNC’s are finding India an attractive place for manufacturing for global Markets. Hence they are bringing enterprises to India rather than taking human resources to their country. India has to cover a great distance to reap the full benefits of globalization, he added.
Comparing India’s position 12 years ago he said, we had the crises of balance of payments then. But now we have a strong 131 billion dollars of foreign exchange reserves and trade integration is 30 per cent today, which resulted in more jobs and more business and trade is driving the economic growth he observed.
The Minister further said we have to take corrective measures to make India a hub for globalization and to reap its full benefits. In this direction he urged all the Non Resident Indians who assembled for the meet to invest in rural economy for construction of all weather rural roads, to build 10 beded hospitals in rural areas and to invest in schools and in projects for providing drinking water for rural areas. He said India believes in investment led strategy for growth. Further the Minister called for investment in agriculture sector as it offers very good opportunity for investment. Shri Chidambaram concluded by urging the NRI’s to come to India not only as NRI’s but also as Non- Resident investors and to convert their savings to investment.
The session was chaired by Shri Rahul Bajaj, CMD, Bajaj Auto Limited. Shri T. Shanmugaratnam, Acting Minister for Education of Singapore, Shri Karan F. Bilimoria, CBE, DL-UK Co-Chairman, Indo British Partnership and Chief Executive-Cobra Beer Ltd. and Shri A.K. Purwar, Chairman, SBI were the panelists. Shri Raghuram Rajan, Economic Counsellor and Director, Research Department, IMF made the Theme presentation.
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