NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday met India Inc honchos, including Tata Group patriarch Ratan Tata, Anil Ambani, Gautam Adani, telecom baron Bharti Mittal and Vedanta’s Anil Agarwal, to pick their brains on how to set right the economy and create more jobs, pressing concerns for his government ahead of the Union Budget.
Top officials said Modi “was in a listening mode and heard out suggestions ranging from relaxing the fiscal deficit to increase spending, which could boost demand, to sector-specific inputs to revive key sectors such as telecom and infrastructure.”
The government is keen to improve business sentiments, get industrialists to loosen purse strings and invest and hopefully create jobs. “Beyond the economy, the PM was open to advise on governance issues and ways to improve ease of doing business,” officials said.
The government is looking at package of measures for the telecom sector, which is mired in huge unsustainable debt as “also the power and infrastructure sectors. The PM wanted to understand what exactly ails these sectors and how to go about remedying things”, according to officials.
The economy has been going through a slowdown with July-September growth at a six-year low of 4.5 per cent. India’s infrastructure output also contracted by 1.5 per cent in November, the fourth consecutive month that infrastructure growth, measured by an index of eight core industries, shrank.
Meanwhile, the BSE Sensex plunged some 788 points on Monday, its worst fall in six months on fears that the US-Iran tensions will engulf the oil-rich West Asian region after US President Donald Trump threatened to sanction Iraq for its apparent support to Iran.
Oil prices also shot up to over $70 a barrel while the rupee plunged below the psychological Rs 72 to the dollar mark.
Government’s steps so far
Steps include slashing corporate tax rates to 22 per cent and pump-priming banks with fresh capital