India seeks more Chinese investments in infra sector

The Dollar Business Bureau

Pitching India’s expanding infrastructure sector as an attractive area of more Chinese investments, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Friday urged the Chinese investors to step up their investments in India’s rapidly-expanding infrastructure market.

Addressing ‘Invest in India’ Business Forum in Beijing, the Finance Minister laid out a detailed roadmap for development of rural and urban infrastructure in India.

“India in these roadmaps offers an attractive opportunity. Because this size of the economic activity is now going to carry on and expand in the next few decades,” he said.

Jaitely, who is on a five-day visit to China, said India continues to be the only global economy maintaining a GDP growth rate of 7.5-8%, and despite an uncertain global environment, the country is poised to maintain the current growth rate in the immediate future.

“Even in an unsupportive global environment we probably would be only economy which moves up towards 7.5% and more towards the 8% growth rate,” he said.

Listing out a host of initiatives taken by the government, Jaitley assured the top Chinese bankers and wealth fund managers that after the Goods and Services Tax (GST) bill, which is expected to transform the overall ease of doing business environment in India, will be cleared from the both the houses of the Parliament soon.

“Indirect reform is pending before the Parliament and I hope to see it through very soon. It is called Goods and Services Tax (GST). We had a major challenge about resource allocation in India. We completely distanced the government from allocation and allowed the market mechanism now to determine that,” Jaitely said.

The minister stressed that his government has taken a massive infrastructure programme to develop rural roads, national highways, railway infrastructure and power connectivity.

“Seven hundred thousand villages in India are going to be connected with regular roads by 2019. “This year we are building about 10,000 km of national highway… Plans are afoot to build more airports and sea ports,” he said, adding that the Chinese companies could explore plenty of investment opportunities in these segments.