Narendra Modi: Ahead of Budget, PM signals push to infrastructure, manufacturing, technology | India Business News – Times of India

NEW DELHI: Ahead of the Union budget, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday signalled a major push to infrastructure, manufacturing, mobility, technology and urbanisation and urged global investors to take advantage of the opportunities available in a “vibrant democracy with a business-friendly environment and a huge market”.
“I am inviting you personally, come and take advantage of the opportunities and link it with your future prospects. India is ready for any assistance that you may need,” the PM told a high-profile panel of global CEOs from ABB, Siemens, IBM, Mastercard, NEC Corporation, Ontario Teachers Pension Plan and others at the World Economic Forum’s virtual summit.
As evidence of India’s resolve and capabilities, the PM spoke of how the country had dealt with Covid-19 and that it was in the process of manufacturing several vaccines against the disease that would help the rest of the world as well. “Many around the world thought India would be the worst-affected country by Covid-19 and face a tsunami of corona infections. Some talked of 70-80 crore infections, over 20 lakh deaths; but India did not let disappointment get the better of it. We transformed the fight against coronavirus into a people’s movement, today India is among the most successful in saving lives,” Modi said.
The NDA government will unveil the country’s annual budget on February 1 and expectations are that major steps will be announced to give a big push to the economy and help it return to a high growth trajectory.
“I want to assure the business world that the situation will now change rapidly on the economic front also,” Modi said as he detailed the country’s fight against the pandemic and how the focus was now on reviving growth and making various sectors of the economy competitive. He added that from tax regime to FDI norms, India had a predictable and friendly environment and pointed to the continuous improvement in global ease of doing business rankings.
The PM also urged global investors to take advantage of the production-linked incentive scheme and said the country’s ‘Atmanirbhar’ campaign was committed to the global good and the global supply chain. “India has the capability, capacity and reliability to strengthen the global supply chain,” he said, adding that the country had a huge consumer base and its expansion would also benefit the global economy. He said the ‘Atmanirbhar’ campaign was launched to accelerate the capacity and resilience of the economy and make the country an export hub. Modi said the government had undertaken a series of reforms across sectors to ensure that the economy was placed on a higher growth trajectory.
The PM also highlighted the steps taken to combat the Covid-19 pandemic and the country’s success in rolling out the vaccination programme. He said two India-made vaccines had been introduced to the world and many more would be made available from India. He said India was also ensuring a global responsibility by sending essential drugs to over 150 countries, and was now sending vaccines abroad.
Modi said India was working on all the four factors of Industry 4.0 — connectivity, automation, artificial intelligence or machine learning and real-time data. India was among the countries where data charges were the cheapest and mobile connectivity and smart phones had reached far and wide, he said. India’s automation design expert pool was vast and the country had made a mark in the field of AI and machine learning, he added.
Watch We introduced several reforms to provide a high growth trajectory to economy: PM Modi