It's best time to invest in India: PM to Davos

New Delhi: Telling global investors that “this is the best time to invest in India”, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday pushed for a common “synchronised” international approach to tackle challenges such as cryptocurrency, even as he highlighted India’s strengths and all the steps that his government had taken to improve the “ease of doing business”.

Delivering the “State of the World” special address in virtual mode at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Mr Modi also pushed for reforms in multilateral organisations so that they can face the challenges of the present and future.

Mr Modi cautioned that the “throwaway culture and consumerism” had made the climate challenge more serious and pushed for a transition from a “take-make-use-dispose” economy to a “circular economy”.

Expressing concern over global supply chain disruptions, inflation and climate change, Mr Modi told investors how India supplied medicines and vaccines to the world as part of the “One Earth One Health” mission. In this context, he pushed for a “Pro Planet People” (P3) approach.

“As a strong democracy, India has given a bouquet of hope to the world,” he said, adding this bouquet encompassed India’s technology and the talent of its people. Hailing India as the “pharmacy of the world” and the world’s third largest pharma producer, Mr Modi reminded investors how India is sending a “record number of software engineers” to the global workforce, adding that more than 50 lakh software developers were working in India.

Pointing out how the number of start-ups in India was just a few hundred in 2014, the PM said this had jumped to over 60,000 start-ups now. He also spoke about the productivity-linked incentives worth $26 billion in 14 sectors of the economy offered by his government to reward the entrepreneurial spirit and new innovation technology. Mr Modi also said that his government had given a boost to the ease of doing business, simplified corporate tax rates, minimised government interference and reduced the number of compliances needed by as many as 25,000 last year. Mr Modi also spoke about India’s “high-growth” trajectory with “welfare and wellness” as its components and promised that it would be “green, clean and reliable”.

India, he said, was fighting another Covid-19 wave with full alertness and caution, maintaining economic growth, and asserted that the nation was brimming with the self-confidence of administering over 160 crore doses of vaccines to its population.

Today, he said, India was “making policies and taking decisions about the present as well as the goals for the next 25 years”. In this period, he added, India has “set the goals of high growth, saturation of welfare and wellness”.

Further, he said, India was focused on reforms in the right direction and global economic experts had praised India’s decisions. “We will fulfil all the expectations that the entire world has from us,” Mr Modi added.