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| India ready for comparison with China: Chidambaram | | |
NEW DELHI, FEB 5
Encouraged by the economy growing at nine per cent, Finance Minister P Chidambaram today said it would not be wrong now to compare India with China though there was a lot to learn from the neighbour, especially execution of projects in time.
"India has often been compared with China...I invite comparison with China. There is enough room in the world for both China and India to grow," he said at an international conference on meeting India's infrastructure needs with public-private partnerships.
"China and India in many ways complement each other but in many areas we compete with each other," Chidambaram said.
India's savings and investment rate as percentage of GDP have gone up by 2 per cent each. But to sustain the revised growth rate of 9 per cent in 11th plan, he said: "Both savings and investment as proportion of GDP must be raised further."
There is much to be learnt from China. "But we are proud of our political system, we believe that we can learn from China about execution of projects within time, strict discipline and reward-punishment system for those who are incharge of the project execution," he said.
"We do not envy China, we wish to emulate China in the matter of infrastrucutre," he added.
Chidambaram expressed confidence that India would receive more investsments after upgrading of sovereign rating to investment grade and seize the opportunity.
Earlier speaking, Praful Patel Vice President (South Asia) World Bank said since 2001 India has attracted more private investment in infrastructure than China.
In order to sustain the growth rate, Finance Minister said India required 320 billion dollars investment in infrastructure over the next five years, and a large part of it would come from private sector through public-private partnership (PPP) model.
He said there were four constraints in attracting investment, which includes weakness in policy and regulatory framework as most of these projects were within the purview of states.
Besides, there was lack of long term market financial instruments to meet equity and debt financing needed by infrastructure projects, he said.
Highlighting other constraints, Chidambaram said there was lack of credible and bankable projects and also lack of capacity among public officials and institutions to handle these projects.
However, he assured that government is aware of the situation and have opened more sectors for public-private partnership.
The Finance Minister also informed that international and Indian finance companies are joining hands to launch dedicated infrastructure debt and equity funds, and added that "efforts taken by these institutions will bear fruits in next few weeks."
He said PPP was a great opportunity, which should be translated into win-win proposition. |
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