USA diary: Meeting American CEOs in the Big Apple

I have been in New York for the past few days, for the first leg of my USA visit. The focus in New York has been meetings with world leaders, business community, CEOs, media personalities and others. I also addressed the UN, speaking about sustainable development and the need to free the world from poverty and inequality.

With Fortune 500 CEOs

I have had comprehensive and fruitful meetings with top American CEOs, bankers and leaders from the financial sector. One of the first programmes I attended was a roundtable with top Wall Street CEOs. I had the wonderful opportunity to interact with CEOs of Fortune 500 companies over dinner.

In these meetings and interactions my message is simple- come, make use of the opportunities in India, invest in India and ‘Make in India.’

I say this on the basis of the track record of our Government in the last fifteen months. FDI in India has increased substantially in the past fifteen months, a trend not seen across the world. FII inflows have grown by a whooping 717%. The Government is doing everything possible to make doing business a lot easier in India. Just recently the World Bank did rankings on ‘ease of doing business’ and this has led to a very healthy competition among states to emerge on top and make business easier in the various states.

We are also working towards creating the right infrastructure that will enable greater investment in India. The Government of India has initiated a movement to ensure every part of India has 24/7 electricity. Our Digital India drive is aimed at ensuring broadband connectivity for the 600,000 villages. Our vision of “Housing for All” calls for over 50 million houses by 2022.

All of this indicative of the scale and scope of our efforts and the huge investment opportunities India has to offer. We are betting on the power of our youth to drive a positive change in the years to come.

The CEOs were appreciative of the efforts of the Government. What delighted immensely was their keen interest in the Indian start-up sector. They were even willing to invest in innovative start-ups. I consider this a very positive thing.

 During our meetings, the CEOs also gave invaluable suggestions on how to remove some bottlenecks they are facing I assured them that they would be looked into and resolved as quickly as possible.

 Exactly a year ago the ‘Make in India’ initiative was launched. My meetings with American CEOs during my last visit, during President Obama’s visit in January and on other occasions have been very encouraging. More investment into India means greater opportunities for our youngsters and more instances for them to showcase their talent to the world.

I remain both confident and optimistic that these deliberations will lead to great progress on the ground and India will continue to emerge as an ideal investment destination at the world stage.