India: Preferred Investment Destination - Goyal Appeals to Diaspora

New Delhi, July 20 (PTI) Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal on Saturday appealed to the Indian diaspora of the US to help promote the country as a preferred investment destination, highlighting the vast opportunities available in various sectors.

He said that the government has taken a series of measures to attract investments and those steps include promoting ease of doing business, reducing compliance burden, opening sectors like space and efface for foreign direct investments.

Goyal also asked the diaspora to participate in making India a developed nation by 2047.

"Help promote brand India as a premium investment destination. Investing in India has tremendous growth potential and we saw NRI deposits (increasing to) USD 3 billion between April and May, and that is four times what it was last year. I am sure many of you would be looking at investments in the Indian stock market, bond market, banking systems, fixed deposits, depending on your appetite for risks," he said while virtually interacting with the Indian diaspora of the US.

He added that though at present the US is attractive for investors because of high interest rates, going forward India provides huge opportunities for businesses.

"I would invite all of you to invest in India. India's growth story will continue unfettered at a scorching pace. India would continue to lead the world economy and will continue to be the most favoured destination for investment, and manufacturing," Goyal said.

On clean energy, he said that India has the world's largest renewable energy programme of 500 GW.

"We already have 200 GW and we are ramping it up and may be on Tuesday's budget, let us wait and watch what further initiatives in these directions of sustainability are brought," he said.

Replying to a question about social media confusion during the general election, the union minister said "we have" lessons to learn as every election teaches a lot of new things.

"I can assure you that we are all working to understand evolving dynamics, what changed, what we need to focus on. After an election, there is always a period of time when anybody who has performed better than expected does have a little more arrogance and somebody who has performed less than expected does take time to introspect and course correction.

"So I think it's too early to provide the solution and talk of the solutions, but I can assure you that nobody here is resting one minute of the day, we are all focused," he added.

Replying to a question on judicial reforms, the minister said that it is a delicate subject.

"Everybody who becomes a judge talks of judicial reforms but resists any reforms, so it's a conundrum that we have to break. I am fairly confident that it's an idea whose time has come and we will see this sector also undergoing reform particularly to reduce the pendency of cases and the long duration to get justice," he said.