'India's economic growth rapidly falling on poor investment sentiment'

By Songbedna Bauri: India's economic growth is declining fast due to the poor domestic investment momentum, global crisis and weak consumer sentiments, said Adi Godrej, president, Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) at the fourth meeting of Government –Industry Joint Task Force. This statement came at the fourth meeting of Government -Industry Joint Task Force held today in the national capital.

The present slowdown can be reversed with the help of various measures such as fiscal consolidation. It is time to ensure that Centre strengthen revenues by speeding public sector disinvestment, which will lead to early GST implementation. The other measures proposed consist fast tracking of National Manufacturing Policy implementation, encouraging and facilitating foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows via raising FDI limits in critical sectors such as aviation, insurance and defence and also giving permission to FDI in multi-brand retail.

As India is witnessing fall in global demand and deterioration of the Eurozone, exports are expected to decline further in this financial year. The trade body has proposed that extra 3% drawback rate should be made available to exporters so that a level-playing field is offered to them.
While, speaking on the Infrastructure Sector, Godrej said that India needs to develop a pipeline of off-the-shelf projects along with awarding infrastructure status to 'Integrated Township Development'.

CII wants Union Commerce & Industry and Textiles Minister Anand Sharma to review these issues on urgent basis.